Selfiecity and "No Selfie Day"

In Teen Vogue’s article “Why You Should Totally Participate in ‘No Selfies Day’” they discuss the idea of selfie culture and it’s affects on self-esteem. Throughout the the article, they discuss the dominant discourse of selfies and selfie culture being associated specifically with teens. Contrarily to the article though, on the selfiecity website, it is shown that selfies are most commonly taken and posted by young adults in their early to mid twenties.

Many of you will probably remember this selfie here which
was a part of a big story in the media when these young college
students were caught taking selfies at a baseball game and
were called out by the announcers as being self centered
and caring more about themselves then the game. 

The way selfie culture is examined in our society relates back to Raby’s piece “A Tangle of Discourses”. Selfie culture and teens is then able to be explained by the discourses of “the storm”, “at-risk teens” and that of “becoming”. The Teen Vogue article discusses how selfies are used to improve one’s self esteem and through editing create the image they want to project of themselves, but also how this can negatively backfire when this does not get the feedback they were looking for. This exemplifies the idea of teens being fragile and also being at risk of low self-esteem, as they are seen as not being able to handle any negative feedback. Also, teens are seen as being in a state of becoming, Raby discusses how the teen years are seen as a point where a teen is working towards becoming an adult and forming their true identity. Raby also discusses in how in response to the idea of teens being seen as at-risk, it creates this feeling of a need to protect, control, and censor teens. The idea of even just having a “no selfie day” is acting out to try to protect teens from hurting their self esteem. While I’m not saying that selfies don’t have any negative effects on self-esteem, I agree with what Bristol posted in that they are more often associated with self-love.  

Even Lemon has jumped into
the world of the selfie

This idea of selfie culture also relates back to Bogad’s “Framing Youth” which states, “we come to know youth as a ‘tribe apart’ (Hersch, 1998) with customs, languages, and rituals all of their own”. Even just the name of “selfie culture” shows how selfies have been created into an entirely different teen culture that needs to be scientifically and culturally examined to be understood, so much so that just googling "selfie culture" brings up hundreds of articles all on whether or not it is "out of control" or "the root of all evil". Also, how as stated above, selfies are most popular with young adults in their early twenties, many of whom were teens just a few years before, are left out of that idea of teen culture. Of course there is the whole stigma of being a technology addicted millennial that those young twenty somethings face from older generations, but they are still mainly left out of that teen culture and the stigmas associated with it.