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Just Check That Selfie, Your Narcissism Might Be Showing

The relationship between social media usage and narcissism

Sonia Diab
5 min readAug 12, 2020
Image via GetStencil

If the story of Narcissus were a modern tale, he wouldn’t be staring at his reflection in the river. More likely, he’d be gazing lovingly into his iPhone front camera. And, as it turns out, probably taking many a selfie along the way.

If you’re like me and you’re not opposed to the occasional selfie, perhaps it’s time we take a good hard look at ourselves…

Narcissism and social media

Narcissism has moved into social consciousness a lot more in recent years. Perhaps that’s because it appears to be on the rise — one study, for example, showed mean narcissism scores have increased by about 30% from 1979 to 2006. There are arguments that culturally, we’ve facilitated, accepted, and perhaps even celebrated narcissism, through the birth of social media.

I’ve found a wave of research exploring the links between narcissistic tendencies and technology. And it’s not pretty. Frankly, I feel a bit attacked.

One 2020 study explored narcissism in relation to envy and self-promotion for travellers. You know those folks who post 8 million photos of their trips on social media? Yes, those ones, where each post includes their…

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Sonia Diab
Sonia Diab

Written by Sonia Diab

Sessional lecturer, corporate trainer, coke zero fiend. Writing on human behaviour, psychology, productivity, philosophy & other stuff. subscribe soniadiab.com

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