Nowadays, with the advancement of internet technology, innovations have come to our lives and the possibility of communicating with many people at the same time has emerged. The integration of new social media into our lives has offered new opportunities in terms of expressing ourselves, but social media also stands out as a factor that increases our presentation of our narcissistic characteristics.
We can say that the media makes it easier for us to be a hedonistic society by taking all our desires and wishes to the extreme. As a result of research conducted worldwide, it has been determined that social media users are the most prone to narcissistic personality disorder. Again, these studies have observed a significant relationship between the frequency of selfies and narcissistic personality. Constantly exposing oneself to people by taking selfies, filtering one's face and only highlighting beauty, exaggerating this as the days go by and getting likes, and going for different ways of displaying, etc.
Narcissism is defined as a fixation with oneself and one’s physical appearance or public image. Many young adults could be described as narcissistic. That’s because they’re at a stage of life when they are establishing their identity and figuring out who they are in relationship to others. But narcissism is now very common among young people through social media. Moreover, no one can think clearly about this.
Narcissistic individuals usually have an inflated, exaggerated, seemingly positive but not real self. Narcissistic individuals have adopted behavioral and thought strategies such as self-praise, not caring about the other party, and not showing value in their interpersonal relationships in order to present their positive self-image to the other party. For this reason, narcissistic individuals are exhibitionist, attention-grabbing, and anxious about their physical appearance.
Receiving a like on social media produces a physiological high by triggering our reward cycle. This good feeling is due to a dopamine rush in the reward center of the brain. The urge to move on to the next thing without fully experiencing the pleasure after receiving dopamine is exactly an addiction. This is called social media narcissism. Individuals who have made flattery a philosophy of life but have no sensitivity to any other subject are growing up. Hedonistic individuals who are only concerned with increasing their number of followers and likes...
In conclusion, it is an inevitable reality that narcissism plays a very important role in social media usage. Frankly, while social media creates an imaginary reality, it dynamically receives energy from narcissism. Individuals with increased narcissistic features send selfies more frequently, rate their selfies as more attractive, spend more time on social networking sites, are more active users of these tools, and generally show more activity on different social networks.
As people's level of narcissism increases, their use of social media increases. Individuals who want to like themselves more than anyone else, stand out, be loved, desired, and receive attention increase their courage and their addiction to social media reaches a high level.
And in societies where the average age of social media use is decreasing day by day, unfortunately, narcissism can reach its most dangerous levels.
