Everyone takes selfies, and it might not be a surprise to anyone that teens take the most. It makes sense; teenagers are living during a time where they want to impress everyone. They want attention, friends, and to be popular among their peers.
To achieve all that in 2016, you need to have a dope set of social media accounts with tons of hot selfies, followers, and compelling content. But there are some appalling consequences to teen selfies that a lot of people are unfortunately not aware of.
Everything from sex trafficking to eating disorders can result from a teen’s obsession and irresponsible use of selfies. Today, we will break down these dangerous risks for you before it’s too late for you or someone you care about.
1. Bullying.
Teenagers are ruthless, mean and insensitive human beings. Their brains aren’t fully developed so they don’t comprehend the trauma that can come from bullying and teasing.
Well, let us paint a picture for you. A teen posts a selfie that looks super edited because he/she is trying to impress their peers and look as good as possible. Unfortunately, instead of being doted over for looking flawless, other teens catch on and bully the person for being fake/ editing their pictures/ being a phony.
Or they post a selfie and people harass them for being fat, ugly, or cake-faced. Public comments on teen selfies on social media are emotionally crippling and mortifying and can make teenagers feel depressed and useless.
Sadly, bullying leads to social isolation, depression, and worst- self-harm or suicide. This is one of the most dangerous consequences of taking selfies as a teenager.
2. Nude selfies.
Teenagers also don’t comprehend the dire consequences of sending a nude selfie to one or multiple people. The fellow teenager that receive the nude selfie of the teen could do a number of traumatic things.
This includes posting it online and sending it to others in a mass text. The teen sending the selfie could be under the impression that their intended recipient will be the only one that sees it, but sadly that’s usually not the case.
Of course, nude selfies are an even bigger reason for bullying among teens than the ones that we mentioned earlier. Teen selfies that are nude can lead to something extremely dangerous and illegal, which we will talk about next.
3. Nude picture trafficking.
If you google teen selfies, you’ll see dozens of sites soliciting “sexy” and “nude” selfies of teens. While some of the pictures might be on there by choice, no doubt that some of them have been found illegally through social media sites and other forums.
The last thing you want is your intimate picture online for millions of perverts to see.
This is violating, dangerous, and obviously traumatizing. Additionally, once something is on the web, it’s there forever, and will no doubt haunt you and cause trouble for you in the future.
4. Eating disorders.
Teenage girls are some of the most likely people to fall victim to a cruel and crippling eating disorder.
Will all of the stick-skinny models in magazines and even just Instagram models, there is an insane amount of pressure on young girls to be thin.
This pressure combined with the stress of being popular and liked among their peers can lead young teen girls to develop an eating disorder.
They want to look as thin as possible in their teen selfies, and this obsession can turn fatal. Eating disorders are often dismissed as a mental issue, but when it goes as far as to shut someone’s body down, death is likely.
5. Social media obsession.
As if teens needed another reason to be obsessed with social media, selfies take the cake. Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are dominated by selfies.
Everyone wants to take the hottest, funniest, most “liked” selfie on social media, which just fuels the obsession. If you thought teens were glued to their phones before the selfie craze came about, you were sorely mistaken. Selfies have made teenagers that more obsessed and unwilling to separate from their phone at all times.
We’re sure you’ve seen those douche bag teenagers taking selfies at every opportune moment, including at funerals and prestigious museums. Sorry folks, but we don’t think this will cease anytime soon.
6. Death by selfie.
You might think that dying from taking a selfie is a plot for a shitty indie movie that will never make it, but it’s true. Teens die for a selfie. Back in February of this year, an Indian teenager was run over by a train while he attempted to take a selfie. In another case, a teen tried to take a selfie with a gun and ended up shooting himself. Another teen tried to take a picture on top of a train and fell to her death. How insane is that? That people can die from taking a selfie. It’s the most needless and senseless way to die that we can ever imagine.
We hope that you take these consequences of teen selfies seriously because they are dangerous, likely, and deadly.
As a teenager, you should be focusing on a lot of other things in your life instead of obsessing over a selfie. As you can see, you can get yourself into a mess of consequences if you continue to take selfies.
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