It is a fact that social media occupies a significant amount of time from the daily lives of their users. With some appearing more and others less active and communicating to their online friends moments of their personal or professional life, the given is one.
No one, or at least almost no one, has not even once uploaded a selfie on his social media. But have you ever wondered what your online friends think about your move?
Survey reveals what your online friends think about the selfies you upload to social media
Most people would say that a selfie is a form of expression or perhaps even a way of boosting their self-esteem. Whatever your reasons, the moment you upload this image, however, it is no longer yours. Instead, you are transmitting this enormous “power” to the online world.
So while you may think that your ever-increasing collection of selfies interests your online friends, the opposite is true. That, at least, is according to a study by Sarah Diefenbach, a professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, published in Frontiers in Psychology. Diefenbach polled a total of 238 people in Austria, Switzerland and Germany to find out how many people regularly take and upload selfies on their social media and what they thought when others did the same.
The results showed that a massive 77% of respondents admitted to uploading selfies regularly, while what was more exciting, however, was the fact that a surprising 82% of respondents said they would like to see fewer selfies on social media. Diefenbach calls the event a “paradoxical selfie”: the idea that we like to take selfies, but we certainly do not like to see other people’s selfies on the internet.
The research not only explored, however, whether we want to see selfies of our online friends but also looked at how we view our selfies compared to those of others. According to the results, people tend to see their selfies as “authentic,” while they believe that other people’s selfies are “less authentic” and more “set up.”
In short, this research shows that there is a massive gap between the way we look at our selfies and how we judge other people’s photos. This suggests that we are comfortable with the selfies we post, as we believe they are not severe or futile, but we believe that everyone else is entirely selfish about the same thing.