Attitudes Toward Selfie Taking in School-going Adolescents: An Exploratory Study

BACKGROUND: Smartphones have become a necessary evil in our lives. Selfies have become the newest technological fad to take over the youth, due to the wide and easy availability of mobile phones. There is paucity of scientific data on selfies in general, and from our country in particular. This study aimed to analyze the attitudes toward selfie taking, body image acceptance, and narcissism personality traits among an urban school-going population in Mumbai. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two hundred and fifty-two students of 11(th) standard, belonging to an urban Mumbai school, were interviewed in a single centric cross-sectional study. Scales used were – attitude towards selfie-taking questionnaire, body image acceptance, and action questionnaire (BIAAQ) and Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Scores obtained were computed using basic descriptive statistics as well as computerized statistical software. RESULTS: Of the 230 completely filled questionnaires, 54% were males. About 42.6% reported that they regularly clicked selfies of themselves. No gender difference was noticed. On an average, 18.1% girls and 15.2% boys clicked more than 4 selfies/day. The gender difference was statistically not significant (P = 0.5273). Difference in mean BIAAQ between the two genders was noticed to be statistically significant, whereas the NPI scores difference was insignificant. CONCLUSIONS: This study is a pioneering/novel/innovative work in the field of selfies. It gives us an insight into the youth's viewpoint towards selfies, which was positive in the majority of the population. A worrisome aspect is the higher body image dissatisfaction among girls. Behavioral addictions such as selfies need more focused research in the future.