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Let me take a selfie: portraits defining the digital age By Sierra Lay and Simon Schuster slay@statenews.com, sschuster@statenews.com The State News
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ith balmy summer weather abounding in East Lansing, groups of MSU students often take to the open-air patios of restaurants to enjoy a meal among friends. Throughout the dinner, smartphones are checked occasionally for varying periods of time and intermittently, a diner holds their phone aloft, staring intently into the screen, their face contorting with the intensity of their expression. They’re taking a selfie. The advent of the smartphone frontfacing camera has made the selfie a
ubiquitous part of the social media landscape. A selfie is an instantaneous self-portrait, often published though applications such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat. The selfie has become so widespread that in 2013 the term was named Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year. But the trend is so new that a variety of analyses have only begun to merge about the meaning of the instant portraits, which are often flattering, sometimes silly and almost always shared publicly. Experts and students alike are in disagreement about just why the selfie has become such an significant part of life both on and off the Internet. Selfie Science Pre-law sophomore Christine Burke said she gets the urge to post pictures
of herself online frequently. She said if she’s bored or if her hair looks good on a particular day, she can’t help but post a picture. “When there’s nothing exciting going on, it’s like ‘why not post a selfie?’” Burke said. Associate professor at the University of Southern Mississippi Chris Barry is conducting research on the meaning and implications of selfies, examining the psychological implications of how selfies are framed. “It can be a sort of way to demonstrate positive things going on in your life,” Barry said. But Peg Streep, an author who has written for Psychology Today on the topic, argued selfies have much more negative implications on a larger scale. See SELFIES on page 2 u