How Can You Link a Selfie Mother To her Selfie Children with Serious Questions Crying For Answers

Just think, only a couple of decades have passed since Cellphones have become natural extensions to our personal and social being, especially young teen girls who became quickly enamored with Selfies; immature and susceptible to flattery and self-affirmation. Now, current studies clearly show the impact of cell phones on physical and mental health and building relationships. Now, these teen Selfies have grown into young millennials, some as mothers, and the question is if their Selfie lifestyle and aspirations have any residual effects especially for their children.

How do Selfie mothers draw a line between their many Selfie adaptations and their tendencies with their children?

Are they committed to an adult non-selfie lifestyle or will their children be incorporated into the world-wide web based on Selfie standards?

Can Selfies become a Narcissistic Addiction?

On one hand, there are two main reasons to post selfies:

… want to feel more positive about oneself, gain more attention or even to show off

… compete with other to get more “likes” on social media mostly based on subjective conformity

On the other hand, Selfies can provide social validation without any authentic engagement or meaningful relationships with real people or society in general. Problems may result in many personal areas such as work, school and emotional instability if special favors or admiration are not received or false criticism implied.

Selfies can become addictive if they become measures of self-worth to overcome low self-esteem. Each new “like me” is a dopamine spike to get more positive attention. Each delete is a disappointment to self-esteem of losing out and not fitting in. Some may be particularly sensitive to exclusion which can cause more unhappiness, even aggressive reaction with invisible cyber bullies.

The stereotype is that people who post selfies are full of themselves or outright narcissists. Strangely enough, however, someone who posts too many selfies can have lowest self-esteem.

What is Narcissism Personality Disorder?

It’s easy to flavor Selfies with Narcissism Personality Disorder described as a “mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence may lie a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism."

How can Selfie participation be evaluated when it is no longer a natural rite of passage to maturity and more of an addiction or an abusive personality disorder?

Does its withdrawal need to be managed like any other addiction such as: take small steps, stay away from frustration, substitute old habits with similar ones, delay, escape, dispute or accept the situation?

Which teenager or adult, for that matter, do you know who will easily attempt to give up their cellphones? Which odd teenager or adult will admit they need a recovery program to stop posting, texting and participating with their peers?

What if Selfie addiction is a logical progression persisting into adulthood? Does it ever diminish?

The huge question requiring some serious answers is what kind of a relationship may develop between a Selfie mother and her innocent children?

Ten transitional possibilities:

...Pass low self-esteem personality to their children

...Use children as another vanity channel to fulfill their emotional needs

...See children as “possessions” in order to build up their own sense of worth

...Measure child’s worth by his or her centers of attention, bragging or alignments to selfie goals

...Agree that lies are acceptable if they validate the screen image

...Confuse responsibility with self-absorption and easily blame others

...Learn that personal daily experience may be absorbed into false reality dramas

...Link emotions of love and caring to pleasing a parent’s selfie goals

...Make the child feel not important, at fault or that he or she is not good enough if selfie expectations are not met

...Can’t feel unconditional love apart from their selfie image rewards

More Serious Questions Crying out for Answers

The internet, social media and cell phone technology continue to advance and change unprecedented development, culture and sociology with unknown parameters or consequences.

Can one summarize that Selfies, young and old, may be a wounded generation dealing with mental stress pain of non achievement?

Have selfie domains created a state of trauma influencing the young to concurrently manipulate the adults? Or is it a reverse push?

Final statements

The self-centered characteristics of Selfies should not have the priority or ability to manipulate and control teenagers, adults or their children for generations to come.

Our society should not have to undergo a recovery process as survivors. But, how do we stop the massive Selfie infiltration? How do we return to normal, respected and valuable roles as mothers and fathers without Social Media surveillance or imposition?

How does society better understand the system in order to be better prepared to be our “better angels” and to help our children become all that they can be?

“The very existence of social media is predicated on humankind’s primitive drive of attention-seeking. And when they successfully monetize your attention, they end up with billions of dollars, and you end up with a screwed up mental state. And if we don’t do anything about it now, the next generation will be a generation of mentally unstable glass creatures.” Abhijit Naskar, Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine

What is your Opinion?

How do you think Social Media has manipulated our current generations? How can the problems of media influence be addressed?

Annemarie Berukoff

When the Narcissist is the Parent

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/08/when-the-narcissist-is-the-parent/?fbclid=IwAR2gdPyYjAiB_jCV4UW8Uv_ggotQr9hMSM8Lw8jVYXxN1xRNmUeGcvEmBwUm%20w2]\

…an outstanding article with must read comments from adults who remember their childhood and needed therapy and support