Name: Sherzod Khayitboev

Course: English Composition 2

ID: 201632786
Cause-effect essay
Negative effects of taking a selfie
Do you believe in magic? Most people do not trust in it although they watched movies or
read books about a young magician, Harry Potter whose power is in his stick. However,
nowadays we see people using such kind of stick, which is considered the magic of technology
and provides people with a new type of a photo called a selfie. The selfie is a photograph that
one has taken of oneself and progeny of digital networks. It is taken with a smartphone or
webcam and uploaded to a social media website (Frosh, p.1). Unfortunately, nowadays most
people are addicted to taking selfies and posting them on the Internet so much that it has already
become one of the parts of their lives. As an evidence, because people used the word selfie in
their speeches more frequently, in 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary announced it as the
word of the year (Senft and Baym, p.1). Nonetheless, more selfies are taken, more negative
consequences people face. Because taking selfies may result in several negative effects such as
wrinkles on the face, creating privacy risks and causing people to be in danger, people should try
to reduce or avoid them.
The first reason why people should stop taking selfies is that it may cause people to have
one of the signs of ageing, namely wrinkles on the face. Most people think that taking a selfie is
just making a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or camera phone
held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Nevertheless, it may bring them harm of which
they have not been aware yet. Dermatologists now believe that regularly exposing the face to
the light and electromagnetic radiation from smartphones can damage the skin, speeding up
ageing and promoting wrinkles (Knapton, 2016). For instance, Rachel Adler quoted a
dermatologist on Simple Skin Care's Advisory Board, Dr. Debra Luftman as saying, Staring at
screens can cause eye strain, decreased blinking and squinting, which in turn can cause
premature wrinkles, eyelid dryness and pigmentation and thus, premature aging. While eyes
are a big concern when it comes to snapping selfies, the lip puckering for photos can cause
dynamic wrinkles around the area (2016). Interestingly, all of these mean that people try to look
good in selfies by pursing the lips, animated or exaggerated facial expressions and repetitive
squinting, but the process of taking those pictures itself may result in their unattractiveness.
Therefore, they should reduce or stop snapping selfies, which results in looking old.

Another reason why people should give up taking selfies and posting them on the Internet
is that it may create privacy risks. Obviously, nobody wants his or her own secrets to be revealed
by others.

It is alarming for them to think that Facebook is using face recognition

technology called Deep Face Project already. Researchers of Facebook Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory argued, We present a system (Deep Face) that has closed the majority of the
remaining gap in the most popular benchmark in unconstrained face recognition, and is now at
the brink of human level accuracy (Taigman, Yang and Wolf, p.1). It is astounding Facebook
processes 350 million photos every day (Taigman, Yang and Wolf, p.3). That is providing
invaluable information for commercial and other types of exploitation. This means that by using
the Deep Face system strangers can easily get information about people who uploaded selfies to
social networking sites. Obviously, most people do not imagine that their selfies can reveal their
identities that can be used for bad purposes. Additionally, National Security Agency can also
match satellite photos with any photos taken inside and outside to identify the exact spot where
that photo was taken and it intercepts millions of images per day including about 55,000
facial recognition quality images (Risen, 2014). The message is that anything people do or
download on their computers leaves a digital trail, which they should take into consideration
while posting selfies on the Internet.
The last and the most significant reason is that selfie takers are becoming so addicted that
they are doing dangerous and unethical things that may destroy their lives. Recent figures show
that 91% of teens have taken a selfie and over 1 million selfies are taken each day (Senft and
Baym, p.2). How many of them can be considered to be good, bad, funny, or crazy? Bitter truth
is that desire to take selfies, upload them to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or
Instagram and collect likes or comments is causing people to die or observe how they are dying.
Is it ethical to have photos in front of dead people or to have fun while others are encountering
difficulties? Are selfies worth waste of peoples precious lives? According to the BBC news, a
Mexican man died after taking a selfie holding a gun in his hand, a bride-to-be Colette Moreno
died in a car crash in June 2014, on her way to her bachelorette party (2016). It also informed
that a 12-year-old Russian girl, known as Oksana, died after climbing onto the railings of a
balcony to take a selfie (2016). Moreover, since selfie stickers became common, the number of
death has sharply increased, namely 15 selfie-takers died in 2014, 39 in 2015 and 73 people died
in the first eight months of 2016 (the BBC news, 2016). It is now clear that the only reason why
people are acting hazardously is strong wish to draw peoples attention, which is indicated with
likes on social networking sites. Nowadays addiction to selfies are causing people to destroy
their lives.

In conclusion, selfies result in wrinkles on their faces and look old, being revealed by
strangers and being fatally injured. We continue listing a number of people who suffer from a
sign of ageing and a number of bad accidents that are caused by snapping selfies, until selfietakers stop making self-portraits, which they think, would decorate their profiles on the Internet.
In my opinion, because it is too hard to make people stop taking selfies, creating devices that will
help to reduce a level of death caused by addiction to snapping self-portraits can be a good
suggestion. The BBC news gave information about a group of students of Carnegie Mellon
University who suggested developing an application, which will warn thrill-seeking selfie takers
when their quest for the ultimate photo is putting their life in danger (2016). They hope the
application will be able to identify when someone is taking a photo at a high point, by train
tracks or in other dangerous situations and alert them to the possible risk to their life. Another
alternative to selfies is that we had better ask somebody to take our photos instead of
photographing ourselves, which makes us more cautious and out of danger.

References
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http://fashionista.com/2016/06/selfies-cause-wrinkles. Fashionista, 2016.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38012990/the-rise-in-selfie-deathsand-how-to-stop-them. Newsbeat, 2016. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
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Sociability. International Journal of Communication 9 2015: 1. Print.
4. Knapton, Sarah. "Selfies can age the skin and cause wrinkles, warn
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2016. Web. 17 Jun. 2016.
5. Risen, James. N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces from Web Images.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/us/nsa-collecting-millions-of-facesfrom-web-images.html?_r=0. The New York Times, 2014. Web. 31 May.
2014.

6. Senft, Theresa, and Nancy Baym. What Does the Selfie Say? Investigating
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7. Taigman. Yaniv, et al. DeepFace: Closing the Gap to Human-Level
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