Two researchers in Munich have discovered evidence that suggests that, ironically, no one really wants to see your selfies.
Sarah Diefenback and Lara Christoforakos from Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich published a study in January in Frontiers in Psychology, titled “The Selfie Paradox: Nobody Seems to Like Them Yet Everyone Has Reasons to Take Them.”
Of the 238 people surveyed, 77 percent said they take a selfie at least once a month, and 49 percent said they take a selfie at least once a week. However, 2 percent of respondents said they would like to see fewer selfies on social media.
Many also agreed on the negative effects of selfies. They said that selfies could have a negative impact on self-esteem and create a superficial image of someone.
So far the numbers seem to contradict the headline. Let's see what really happened. The survey questions also included very personal questions about what people think about this behavior.
An example of the discrepancy mentioned above was in the question: what do we think about our own selfie compared to what we think about other people's selfies:
90 percent of participants think of other people's selfies as self-promotion, but only 46 percent said the same about their own selfies.
These numbers show that the majority of people use selfies, but no one likes to look further.
The researchers conducted the survey online. Respondents came from Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and the researchers acknowledge that there are potential Eurocentric biases in the study. They say other cultures are more accepting of selfies and that further study is needed.
