By: Savannah Stover
“But first, lemme take a selfie.”
We all know the type. Heck, who am I kidding? I am the type. Photographing people and places, imprinted memories of happy days, artistically crafted self-images, have all been a part of our lives since the invention of bread.
Ok, I am being facetious, but surely “selfies,” or self-portraits, can be traced back hundreds of years, dating back to the Renaissance era. Photographic selfies were introduced in the late-1800s and characterized by Andy Warhol in the 1950s.
With the advent of social media platforms like MySpace, profile photos became a thing. Google reports over 93 million Android selfies are taken each day, and Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are the go-to canvases on which we proudly display our photogenic likeness.
How is this exposure affecting our romantic partnerships?
Communications researcher Dr. Daniel Halpern and colleagues, with Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, wanted to explore the how posting selfies on social media affected romantic relationships, hypothesizing that it would increase feelings of jealousy among romantic partners and contribute to greater feelings of dissatisfaction in relationships. Halpern and his colleagues anticipated that the relational problems would stem from not only from jealousy but also from the contrast of the online persona versus the “true” self the partner knows them to be.
The study published in a 2017 issue of Telematics and Informatics, surveyed 305 participants. The first wave of research measured the frequency of posting selfies, jealousy and the creation of the online persona. The second wave, conducted after a year, measured photo-related conflicts and perception of relationship quality. Participants assessed five components of relationship quality such as happiness and strength and health perception of the relationship. They also shared how often they had uploaded a selfie to social media, and how often they argued with their partners about pictures they had uploaded, for comments they posted on others’ pictures, or for comments posted on their pictures.
The researchers found that sharing selfies increased feelings of jealousy within relationships. Most commonly, partners reported not understanding why the individual sharing selfies wanted to share what was “theirs.” Concerns about interaction with third-party individuals increased these feelings of jealousy and relationship insecurity. The result was an increase in monitoring of the partner’s social media. This media monitoring only intensified the feelings of jealousy and created a negative loop, making them feel an ever-increasing need to monitor the partner’s social media.
Consistent with previous studies that demonstrate narcissistic tendencies in those who post frequent selfies, the study showed that in some cases, the person who crafted an online persona was detrimentally distracted with crafting their image and less concerned with the well-being of their partner or the relationship, leaving the partner to feel neglected and less important — sidelined by the focus on the idealized self.
Halpern and his colleagues acknowledged that not every selfie is posted under the guise of narcissistic self-infatuation and that posting selfies has some benefit in enhancing self-esteem and empowering those who view themselves as being in a bad relationship. Still, their research showed that posting selfies can have a problematic impact on relationship well-being and longevity.
Even as we perfect the pout and raise the peace sign, we must weigh the impact. In a world where we are lonely and seeking authentic connection, it is important to be mindful of when self-branding distracts us from our relationships.