We’ve all got a friend whose obsession with taking photos of themselves borders on the psychotic. Now, that selfie fiend in your life can claim an actual recognised medical condition is responsible for their snap-happy ways – ‘selfitis’.
If it sounds like fake news, that’s because it begun that way, with a spoof news story by the American Psychiatric Association sparking an actual study by Nottingham Trent University and Thiagarajar School of Management in India. The team spoke to 200 people in focus groups and 400 via a survey to ask them about their photography habits.
They discovered that ‘selfitis’ does indeed exist and that there is even a scale of severity for sufferers. Someone with borderline selfitis would take at least three selfies a day but not post them, while someone with acute selfitis takes the same selfies and posts each one on social media. If you’ve got chronic selfitis, you’re taking pictures all day long and posting photos of yourself more than six times per day.
Dr Janarthanan Balakrishnan from Nottingham Trent University said: ‘Now the existence of the condition appears to have been confirmed, it is hoped that further research will be carried out to understand more about how and why people develop this potentially obsessive behaviour, and what can be done to help people who are the most affected.’
We wonder where Kylie Jenner would appear on the scale…
READ MORE: How To Take The Perfect Selfie: 7 Top Tips From The Pros