Phrases that can be heard in the halls on a regular basis: “Are you taking a selfie?” “Get in my selfie!” “Nice selfie!”
Selfies have become a worldwide phenomenon in recent years, especially with the invention of front-facing cameras, along with improvements in photography.

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With people of all ages and demographics participating in the trend, participants cite various reasons as to why they take selfies.
“I personally like doing it because I like showing my friends what I’m doing or taking pictures with them to document the moment,” senior Laressa Copeland said. “Or when I have a cute outfit on or I’m going out, it just makes me want to take a photo.”
According to senior Anthony Tang, taking a “good selfie” rarely occurs on the first try.
“I have around 1,600 selfies on my phone,” Tang said. “Some of them are with friends; others are just of me. I usually take a ton then go through them later to pick out the best ones.”
Yet, the selfie has more purposes than simply showing off to friends.
“It’s weird because time has been flying by so fast, and you want to remember everything for sentimental reasons,” Copeland said. “It’s such a strange feeling to go back and look at pictures from even just a few years ago. I can’t imagine years from now looking at all our ridiculous selfies.”
With technology rapidly evolving, people are able to capture more photos than ever before.
“I think it’s a great way to document the attitudes and feelings of that moment,” Tang said. “We have the ability to take an unlimited amount of photos, so why not take advantage of it?”
The obsession with selfies has gone as far as creating a selfie stick, a pole that attaches to your phone, extending selfie range and widening the shot of the picture being taken.
“I myself, do participate in taking selfies,” Progress Monitoring Coach Bina Shah said. “My cousin brought one of those selfie sticks on vacation. We were actually taking selfies of us taking selfies with the selfie stick, it was hilarious.”
However, along with the purely entertainment purpose of selfies, the pictures also hold a psychological side.
“I think that when people are alone and they want affirmation or somebody to tell them they look pretty or to know what they are doing, that is their way of sharing information,” Shah said. “Some people do it just to hear something good about themselves, but I think other people just do it to share where they are or to literally take a picture because they have nobody else to take a picture of them.”

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The reason for why selfies are taken can also be explained from an anthropological standpoint.
“They are a popular trend, a new way for people to express themselves individually,” Dr. Susan King, social studies teacher with a PhD in anthropology, said. “People are showing themselves in different places or in different moods.”
According to King, the reason relates to technology and the current time period.
“This is one more way people in a very technological age and a technologically focused generation connect with each other,” King said. “You’re documenting your life. It’s like an active ongoing scrapbook. It’s one more avenue of sharing who you are with people and sharing what’s important to you.”
Similar to Shah, King said that taking selfies could be seen as conceitedness.
“It’s also sort of narcissistic because it’s all about you, and the idea is that other people are going to see this, and in the sense that one is vain enough to think that others are interested in seeing pictures of you,” King said.
King remained optimistic, stating that not everyone who takes selfies is doing it for self-centered reasons, as it could be to show self-expression and creativity.
Tattoos, which became a trend after they were displayed primarily by members of the military before expanding to men, and then finally women, could be compared as a similar phenomenon.
“Things change with time and what the culture is interested in,” King said.
While this is the first era that has the technology to make taking selfies a possibility, it is not the first example of members in a culture trying to express themselves.
“Every culture is going to represent itself one way or another,” King said. “We have cave art going back thousands of years. The Lascaux caves in France for example. They drew pictures that look like people hunting, and they’re doing things in the pictures that people did in their time.”
While taking selfies is a popular trend today, there is a possibility it will not last forever.
“Maybe it’s something that’s just of the moment, and catching the spirit of the times or the fact that people can do this now,” King said. “You guys are living in a very interesting and a very cool time, a time when you can reach out to people and interact with people you never thought possible.”