Who doesn’t love a good selfie? If you are on Instagram, and here’s betting you are, you’ve probs doctored an image or two. Are we filtering and #nofilter-ing our way through life?

These days of reality TV overload and insta-public documentation of our every move, location, and meal has left us feeling the need to be camera ready at any given moment. But what non-reality star without the hair and makeup people has the ability to pull that off? No one. That means a little handy camera work has to take place, and take place often. You know how some women have that ethereal glow no matter what time of day they are posting and, yes, even on those “look how horrible I woke up” shots? It’s a filter.

Leandra Medine recently penned an article on an Instagram lashing out over an image she posted of her bare face. And she’s the Man Repeller, people! If she can’t get by with posting a not-so-perfect pic, who amongst us can hope to? In the article Medine goes on to say this inspired her to seek the help of a makeup artist who taught her how to diminish her flaws and highlight her attributes via contouring.

The question is … why do we have to look so freakin’ perfect all the time? Why is it not ok to post a pic where you look human? Is it because it is forever immortalized on the interwebs? Is it because an old boyfriend, rival or potential client may see you with a zit or dark undereye circles? Or is it because everyone else online seems to be flawless? Even when we happen to get a shot of ourselves that looks good, no manipulation, it has to be announced with a #nofilter tag. And even then, does anyone really believe it hasn’t been enhanced a little bit?

It leads us to wonder what we are doing to our young girls. They see teens on Nickelodeon or Disney Channel leading their daily lives in full makeup, done hair, and heels. Every Instagrammer or YouTuber they follow is picture perfect. Our society is inundating girls with the image of faultless looking people who are really just like them, zits and all. Can this really be good for anyone’s self esteem?

Then there are those of us who are decidedly unphotogenic. No filter, contouring, or app can do the justice of a mirror or real life because we can’t seem to take a good pic to save our lives. What’s a camera shy girl to do? That’s where those hand, lap, and feet shots come in handy. I speak from experience.

If you are simultaneously wagging your head in dismay over the horribleness of the filter generation and wondering which of those filters, exactly, would make you love your selfie more, here’s a list of which filters and apps to use to enhance your selfies.

CreamCam: Maybe the only retouch app any of us really need. This free app turns skin from real to flawless in an instant.

ModiFace: A free photo editor with reshaping and feature enhancing basics.

Perfect365: Hailed as the “one-tap makeover”, this free app lets you zap any spots, resize, and reshape.

Photo Wonder: This free app mixes serious with fun. Your basic retouch functions with creative background and collage choices.

Pixtr: A fancier retouching app that gets you picture perfect in one tap for $2.99.

Facetune: Fix your smile, skin, coloring, shape, hair, and just about anything else with this effects app for $3.99.

These are all fun and even kind of addictive. So what’s the harm done? Unless you are sending retouched pics out as headshots for paid modeling gigs, I can see none. But how great would it be to see a trend in posting real, unadulterated images of ourselves? You go first.

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Image of girl taking selfie via Shutterstock

The post Selfie Made: Is Looking Better On Instagram Than Real Life Worth It? appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnDisgusted by overwhelming portions of salacious fare served up on the Internet? In today’s “click, monitor, push” information-marketing world, what we “see” is about more than algorithms—it’s about who we are.

I looked at a leaked photo and saw a naked celebrity. To be honest, while I didn’t realize what was on the other end of the hyperlink, there was probably enough information surrounding it that I should have known better. It was an impulse move (part curious, part prurient, part lazy) and I’m a little disgusted with myself for not thinking through my click. It’s not something I’m continuing to beat myself up about, but nevertheless, the event was indeed criminal and my choice was complicit. I’m sorry I did it.

I’m usually better than that when it comes to sensationalism and/or potential privacy breaches (of celebs or otherwise). I didn’t watch the Ray Rice wife-beating elevator video or the ISIL beheadings, I avoid “Read this Fucking Story!” headlines like the plague and I try to train a hypercritical eye on anything dubbed “trending.” I do this because at the end of the day, I know that in many ways I am what I click, and I do my best to exert at least a modicum of control over my intentions and actions when it comes to media consumption.

The consumption-equals-self concept (I think it began with “you are what you eat”) is not a new phenomenon, particularly in the media marketplace. I’m one of those before-and-after folk who, unlike the digital natives, came of age without an Internet, reading paper-based things and taking in what I could through a mere four or six channels on a rabbit-eared television set. Even then, though, I knew that my media interactions had implications beyond the ink stains on my fingers and my Sonny & Cher-strained eyeballs. I knew that my choices percolated up to sinister marketing meetings where decisions were made as to who I was (i.e., my demographic) and what I would be sold going forward.

In some ways, it seemed like a fair deal. I spoke with my choices. The powers that be listened and responded. Quid pro quo, right? (I confess that I secretly wished we were a Nielsen family.) But, still, there was something safely delayed about these transactions. It took time for Madison Avenue, the networks and the rest to understand my habits, construct customized offerings and deliver what I seemed to be willing to view. I assumed I’d eventually get more of what I thought I wanted, but the Mad Men and Media Merchants were somehow remote; there was some solace in the lack of immediacy.

Today’s media is a different beast. Think the above mindspace-commerce formula on steroids. Better still, on crack. As I busily click away, information is instantaneously gathered, crunched and fed back to me in the form of related content. If I click on naked celebs, violent videos, popular tripe and crap like that, then boom!—more naked celebs, violent videos, popular tripe and crap like that. Simple, even for us nerds who know nothing about how the intertubes do the voodoo they do.

Today, we are each in the business of creating sophisticated DIY echo chambers of information. There’s a one-to-one relationship between our surfing and its feedback, with virtually no play in the wheel. Liberal information for liberals. Conservative for conservatives. Shopping for shoppers. Not slowly but surely, but here and now, again and again, in real time until you buy or, as the case may be, buy in.

Smile for the Clickbait

Okay, so it’s no secret, nor is it surprising, that countless soulless algorithms are digesting my info and creating a customized and finely tuned online media environment just for me. And this isn’t always a bad thing. Aside from my Nielsen aspirations, I’m okay when options for that end table I’ve been valiantly surfing for or the first-edition Hemingway I’ve been staring at for months on eBay magically appear in my Facebook feed. And who needs to see those inane (not-my-bent) political ravings or overzealous (not-my-belief-system) religious messages. Not me. And through tech wizardry, I don’t have to, right? Huzzah!

But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? If we stare a little cross-eyed at our newsfeeds (wherever they reside), we can see what amounts to a selfie—a homemade portrait that depicts something between an accurate view of who we are and some distorted caricature of our likeness. Beyond the algorithmic give and take, the scrolling image reflects something about us and our desires. It’s been said that, if nothing else, we can decide what we pay attention to. In the end, such choices amount to no small thing.

This is not to say that these choices are always easy ones. When the video surfaced of NFL running back Ray Rice assaulting his wife in an elevator, for example, I faced a decision: To click or not to click? No? Maybe, but consider that its going viral led to a much-needed culture storm that continues to reverberate beyond the football league; the phenomenon of millions of people watching that recorded crime translated into critical knowledge and a subsequent national uproar.

But managing my relationship with information is also critical. Can I understand an issue without joining an ugly horde of voyeurs? Can I develop an internal brain-muscle memory that tells me that when I look at something I’ll be participating in a media marketing measurement system that will not only blow back to my own info trough but to the world’s as well?

Consider the birth of widespread disintermediated information flow, which in large part came in the form of the website known as Digg. The site (and its once-ubiquitous share buttons) was a prototype for grander social media to come (Facebook, Twitter and the like) and a crucial turning point in the democratization of editorial decision-making. (Full disclosure: My brother was CEO at the time.) In its 2009 heyday, Digg boasted 45 million users.

It more or less worked like this: When you came across something on the Web that interested you, you could Digg it by clicking a button associated with the story. This acted essentially as a thumbs-up vote, which would then determine its rise or fall on the Digg homepage. This meant users chose what was top-priority news and what wasn’t. The upside was enormous: Events previously buried by jaded, ignorant or bought editorial gatekeepers could jump to the top of the pops.

As with most big ideas, however, there’s a double edge to this otherwise gallant swordplay. If the world is watching, say, the Arab Spring or a maybe an important political debate, and that activity is instantly measured and widely promoted based on its popularity, that’s a good thing. But what about mob rule? I remember when naked Paris Hilton photos rose to the top of the Web world (with Digg’s help, by the way). What else was happening on that day? I wonder.

Mirror, Mirror

In a world (go ahead, say it like the guy on the movie trailers—there’s a dubious air about all of this) where we clickers increasingly decide what’s news, what’s worth looking at and what’s not, we more or less get exactly what we deserve. We can debate all millennium about the advantages or disadvantages of such people power (mob rule?) or algorithm-based marketing (stalking?), but the truth is, in one form or another, these formulas have been in play since well before the penny press—and they’re here to stay. Bitching about it is kind of like cooking dinner and then complaining that the chef is a talentless hack who’s serving up a bunch of slop.

What’s important, then, is how what we see on our screens is up to us as a culture of users—which, of course, means it’s ultimately up to us as individuals. There’s black and white—I should not have opened the naked celeb link. It shouldn’t have taken much thought to know what I was doing and thus supporting. And then there’s nuance—I can follow certain stories (domestic violence vis-à-vis Ray Rice or Middle East policy vis-à-vis the ISIL insanity) without voting for the dissemination of grotesque and sometimes even criminal bits and bytes on the Web.

What’s required for navigating this, on a personal level, is taking a moment to reflect before we open a link. Why do we blindly click? Do we think about the blowback that will be mainlined not only into our own info-intake valves, but into our culture as a whole? All told, our impulses are too often sadly unmediated: Curious. (What’s everyone going on about?) Prurient. (“She’s kind of hot. What’s behind this curtain?”) Lazy. (Cool! Click!) Going forward, I’m going to try to do a better job of casting my brain-space ballot. And the next time I feel the urge to get all indignant about “information” that comes my way, I’ll keep this in mind: Often, we get just what we ask for.

Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott at adelson dot org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

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Images: Chris Gilmore (top), SamahR (middle) and Eiti Kimura. 

The post Beyond the Algorithms – Don’t Look Now, But You Are What You Click: HyperKulture appeared first on EcoSalon.

Love ’em or hate ’em, selfies are here to stay. Here’s how to take a selfie that doesn’t make your followers want to… well, vomit.

Whether you think selfies are a symptom of narcissism or a powerful form of self-expression, you have to admit – they’re becoming a total snore. I mean, how many extended arm shots can you stand of yourself, never mind other people?

Before you take a selfie in front of the mirror (for the 17,432nd time), check out these seven selfie masters – they’ll either shame you into never taking a selfie again, or inspire you to do great things with your camera:

Image: imgur

1. The family portrait selfie

If you’re going to take a selfie of you and the fam, why not take the most hilarious selfies of all time? (Click on the photo credit above for the rest. You might have to change your pants afterward.) Too. Cute. For. Words.

2. The mirror selfie

I dare you to take a mirror selfie after checking out doodle master Helene Meldahl’s Instagram feed. Make that a double dare.

Image: Twitter

3. The humblebrag selfie

If you’re going to post a humblebrag selfie, then post one that’s so amazing nobody can hold it against you – I mean, the guy’s in SPACE.

Image: Huffington Post

4. The WTF selfie

If you want people to ignore the fact that you’re taking selfies, then take selfies that leave them speechless. Like this dude.

Image: reddit

5. The artsy fartsy selfie

Photoshop ain’t got nothing on this kid! If you’re going to take a selfie, you may as well go big or go home.

6. The cute couple selfie

This guy is on a date… with himself! A single Keisuke Jinushi was so fed up with being surrounded by couples taking cutesy selfies that he decided to make (a totally hilarious) statement.

Image: reddit

7. The celebrity photobomb

Okay, so this one you can’t really plan, but LOOK IT’S MARK WAHLBERG! Can we try to take a selfie like this anyway? Without getting arrested? Anyone?

What creative ways to take a selfie would you add to this list?

Image: Andrew Fysh

The post 7 Ways to Take a Selfie that Doesn’t Suck appeared first on EcoSalon.

Who doesn’t love a selfie? Whatever your mood, you can express yourself all at an arm’s length. And now you can win a $1000 photo contest just by showing off your selfie. Yes, that’s considered a word now.

Selfies have single handedly changed our culture–showing all aspects of social interaction, humor, body language, self-awareness, and privacy–it’s the self portrait of our age. Only you don’t have to pay a small fortune to get it done. All you need is a smartphone and a good angle.

And what better way to celebrate the selfie than with a photo contest? Attitude is everything–all the more reason to enter exacly.me’s #ExpressYourSelfie photo contest with the opportunity to win $1000 to purchase whatever you want. Maybe you crave a new iPad Air or that perfect pair of Cri de Coeur shoes or a Fujifilm digital camera.

How do you enter exacly.me’s #ExpressYourSelfie photo contest?

Visit exacly.me via the web or mobile and connect with Facebook to upload a photo from an album that expresses your unique spirit with a one or two word description: “Fashion is me”, “Photography is me”, “Vegan is me”, etc.

What do you win?

The selfie with the most Facebook likes wins $1,000, the second place winner receives $500, and the third place wins $250. That’s some serious cash for a five second selfie.

When’s the deadline?

The party ends on August 15, 2014, so what are you waiting for? Upload your favorite Facebook pic today. You can’t win if you don’t enter. Don’t be shy, #ExpressYourSelfie!

What is exacly.me?

It’s the world’s first opinion app.  Swipe-select through photos, videos and images to get killer recommendations as unique as you.

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Image: Paško Tomić

The post #ExpressYourSelfie Photo Contest ($1000 Value!) appeared first on EcoSalon.

When did we all start trying to look like celebrities? Is the selfie to blame?

In a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, actor James Franco defended his love of the selfie. Clearly, the Instagram-obsessed Franco is a self most of us won’t complain about looking at…but it’s more than just his hotness that makes his selfies meaningful. He writes, “Attention is power. And if you are someone people are interested in, then the selfie provides something very powerful, from the most privileged perspective possible.”

Franco’s right. Attention is power. It’s why little kids jump around the rooms like maniacs to get their parents’ attention. It ensures that the energy goes towards the person making the scene. For a little kid, that’s kind of important. They’re little. Somewhat helpless. They need attention. But it’s a security issue we outgrow, usually. At least, we used to.

“[T]he selfie provides something very powerful, from the most privileged perspective possible…” It’s a really bold presumption, but Franco does make the important distinction: “if you are someone people are interested in,” that is. Did he just put us in our place?  Are we not interesting unless we’re as beautiful as James Franco? Or Lady Gaga or Justin Beiber?

Whether James Franco or Kanye West (or James Franco as Kanye West) or boring old me, someone is going to see what we post on our preferred social networks. Franco’s legion of fans on Instagram certainly garners more of an audience than the rest of us, but the point is really that someone is “watching” us virtually all of the time. And when we’ve got an audience—be it only on Facebook or Instagram—we inevitably start to perform, to play a role, pay more attention to whether or not we’re having a bad hair day.

The doppelganger game may have peaked on Facebook a few years ago, but it’s morphed into less of a game and more of a homework assignment these days. If you kind of look like Kim Kardashian, you might as well do what you can to look even more like her at all times. “Now, while the celebrity selfie is most powerful as a pseudo-personal moment, the noncelebrity selfie is a chance for subjects to glam it up, to show off a special side of themselves — dressing up for a special occasion, or not dressing, which is a kind of preening that says, ‘There is something important about me that clothes hide, and I don’t want to hide’,” writes Franco. At least we have our options then. Glam it up or scale it way down. Either way, we’ve got an audience waiting for our noncelebrity selfies. But what fun is being a noncelebrity? We want A-list audiences and Beiber-esque fanclubs, too. We want cyberstalkers. But since we can’t have those, at least we’ve got companies eager to capitalize on our selfie-obsession. “The quantified self movement can be, and has been, exploited for profit. Once the quantified self became marketable, smart marketers and developers sprang into the vacuum, coming up with more ways to monitor more behaviors. Our quantified selves get us hooked on the products, platforms, and services that promise to make us better versions of ourselves,” writes Sarita Bhatt in FastCoexist. They love us. They really love us! Thank the lord.

Society has always been capable of handling a few self-obsessed narcissists. But the tide is shifting and the condition has spread deep and wide. “[A]s a culture, we seem to believe that it is vital to not only track, but post our personal actions on every possible social network,” writes Bhatt, “The world must know how many miles we ran, the scenic views that accompanied the run, and what we did afterwards to celebrate the run.” So, while we may be forced into the nonceleb class, we can live a pseudo-celeb life for our followers. They think we’re beautiful, right?

Of course, this epidemic “self movement” also leads the way for issues like body dysmorphic disorder, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, anxiety and depression, not to mention the substance abuse and other ways we attempt to soothe ourselves from the stress our public personae put on us. Just like the celebrities we’re trying to emulate, we’re starting to suffer from the same disorders that often afflict people subject to high levels of adoration.

Franco defends the accusations that the selfie is an indicator of self-involvement, “in a visual culture, the selfie quickly and easily shows, not tells, how you’re feeling, where you are, what you’re doing,” he writes. But isn’t that also kind of making another equally important point? Why do we need to “quickly” or “easily” show how we’re feeling, where we are or what we’re doing? Can’t some of our lives be private? (Don’t answer that, NSA.)

Our sense of self-worth, the Mister Rogers kind of beauty that we’ve been taught matters most of all, has  taken a backseat to how pouty our lips look in the bathroom mirror selfie we just took. We’re in competition with everyone else online. If we can’t be as important as James Franco, at least we can make other people in our feed seem less important than us. But the selfie is a “tool of communication” more than vanity, according to Franco. It’s what we use to give the world “a sense of who we are.” And on that, I couldn’t agree with him more. But with a few caveats: Who are we, really? Do we know? Do we want to? And can we be beautiful without an audience?

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post Your Selfie and the Meaning of Beauty (According to the Internet and James Franco) appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnI’m guilty of the occasional selfie. So, I took a new one in honor of 2013’s word of the year—and highlighting one of my favorite words.

The fact that “selfie” is the  2013 Word of the Year doesn’t say good things about how we, collectively, behaved this year.

Selfie. Just look at it sitting there doing nothing and not even being a real word.

As a writer, I admit that I think about words more than the average person. I constantly strive to replace vague words with clear words and wimpy words with strong words because language, when used thoughtfully, is a powerful change agent.

Let’s look at two of my favorite issues for a quick primer: Pro-Life vs. Anti-Choice. Gay Marriage vs. Marriage Equality. We use language every day to pull people over to our side, and to separate ourselves from what we disagree with.

Selfie is static. It’s a photo capturing a staged moment in time. There’s rarely action expected or required on the part of the viewer (aside from maybe clicking “like” or giving it a heart). Unlike the heavily-charged linguistic choices mentioned previously, selfie is a throw-away.

Selfie itself is a structurally wimpy word. Say it out loud and try to sound forceful. It’s impossible and, what’s worse, is that I swear you have to cock your head a little to the side to say it.

You know what’s a powerful word? Cunt. That’s right. It’s so powerful that even Cher stumbled recently and ended up using “c-word” instead of the real thing when describing Sarah Palin. To be fair, Cher was wrong. Palin totally isn’t a cunt. Cunts are powerful and strong. I’d call Palin a twat.

As long as we’re on the topic of words and their origin—and cunts—here’s a little history lesson from Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. “Cuneiform,” the most ancient form of writing, derives from the Sumerian, “kunta” meaning “female genitalia.” At that time, women were likely to be accountants or administrators of Temple of Inanna in Sumeria. So, it is highly likely that cuneiform was “the sign of the kunta” who kept the books. So, a “cunt” is actually a “queen who invented writing and numerals.” Ta da.

Respect to Cher; cunt was definitely the wrong word for Palin.

So why has cunt (which was good enough for Chaucer and Shakespeare) been replaced by the more delicate sounding pussy, hoo-hah or va-jay-jay in polite (such as it is) company? According to linguists, the answer might be less complicated than the reason some words fall out of favor today—see the ongoing attack on the word “vagina.”

On Slate, Forrest Wickman points out that cunt is a blunt, Anglo-Saxon word, and that many of the most taboo words are Anglo-Saxon monosyllables with short vowels. Just think for a second, you’ll come up with a list.

The Oxford Dictionary Online’s choice of selfie as our word of the year reflects our growing interest in personal technology and dicking about on the internet (as did last year’s winner, GIF), but  is also  a reflection of our narcissism. A selfie is a photo we take of ourselves and post online. It’s rare that we don’t look awesome in these photos, just ask Beyonce. The lighting just so. Chin tipped down to avoid fat-face. Bookshelves lined with smart people books or a lovely natural scene providing the backdrop.

Conceptually, the word of the year is light and silly. It’s supposed to be reflective of pop culture; I get it. If that’s the intent, twerk might have been a more apt commentary on 2013—though if I never have to type that word again I win at life.

In a year when people are constantly using language for their own self-interest (Oh, hi, Obamacare, didn’t you used to be the Affordable Care Act?), selfie might just be the perfect choice.

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The post ‘Selfie’ Is Our Word of the Year: That Happened appeared first on EcoSalon.

The bathroom mirror shot. The silhouette. The beach shot. The one where you try to make it look like someone else took it. How many Facebook ‘selfie’ photos do you post? And what do they say about your personality?

It’s closing in on a decade since Facebook changed our modern culture. We were swept up into the nonstop world of  updates, profile pages, and deciding whether or not to air our relationship status for the whole world to see. And of course, arguably the most important aspect of Facebook: which pictures of ourselves we flaunt.

Our enthusiasm was warranted, initially. After all, in just a decade we went from a time when a phone was just that—a device to make phone calls with—to it becoming a tool that allows us to read books, make videos and find the closest Hooters location, as well as the occasional, but now less necessary, phone call. And its most seemingly vital function: the Facebook tether.

That’s progress all right, and it’s made us all a little giddy. It is nice to skim through pics of old classmates and family members you haven’t seen in years. But has Facebook (and other social networks) made us all narcissists? Or is our obsession with the selfie photo just a passing phase as we adjust to living out loud via social media?

The long-range effects of social media are still yet to be determined. But one thing’s for sure, it’s going to be quite a ride. In the meantime, though, what exactly does the selfie pic say about you? Any of these ring true?

1. You’re kind of a loser: According to a recent study out of the U.K., “oversharing” of Facebook selfies could actually damage your relationships in the real-world, the Huffington Post reports. “[B]oth excessive photo sharing and sharing photos of a certain type makes almost everyone like you less.”
2. Most people don’t relate to you:  The researchers found that aside from your very close friends and relatives, excessive photo sharing, particularly of your own face, isn’t relatable for most people. “Increased frequency of sharing photographs of the self, regardless of the type of target sharing the photographs, is related to a decrease in intimacy,” the researchers noted in the study. The excessive amount of photos of yourself make it awkward for people who don’t actually know you all that well—and most Facebook users have a significant amount of “friends” who are, more or less, not really friends.
3. You’re desperately insecure: Building a reputation (with strangers and the closest of friends) is what most people taking the selfie photos are after—the (perceived) intimacy, the cloying compliments, the appearance of themselves they want to put forth in the world—drive the need to be seen. But it also makes it obvious to everyone else just how needy you are.
4. You’re a narcissist: The insecurities, body image issues and the increasingly more detrimental condition of Facebook jealousy, makes us look at someone else’s selfie and assume they have a better life than we do. But since that reality’s too difficult for most people to accept, they instead focus on how awesome they are and the narcissist spiral sucks them in. They begin to find every little thing they do valuable to their online community, oversharing updates and pics.
5. You’re lonely: Loneliness will make us do weird things, and the obsession with Facebook selfies is a bit like adjusting your outfit or hair half a dozen times while you sit alone at a bar trying not to look lonely. Subtly or not, people pick up on the vibe and it can be a turn off as the line between loneliness and desperation is incredibly thin.
6. You’re drunk: Drunk people do stupid things in the real world and often even far dumber moves on Facebook. Then, one of the other more common justifications sink in the next day…the narcissism, the loneliness, etc, and folks justify keeping the drunken images up, or opt for new ones altogether.
7. You’re neurotic: Some people obsessively post the Facebook selfie pics simply because they’re neurotic. Is this pic better? What about this pic? I haven’t changed my pics in a while, is that bad? There’s a reason Woody Allen makes movies and stays out of the public eye the rest of the time. Neuroses are annoying, even when you can simply scroll right past them.

So, what’s a healthy balance?

Of course we should share fun times and great photos whenever we feel like it. Not every selfie image is going to mean something is wrong with you. But try to recognize when you’re ‘oversharing’ versus legitimately changing your profile pic or sharing a photo of you with President Obama. Be judicious. And most of all, be present in the real world. Sometimes, an experience is most rewarding when you’re just fully immersed in it, not trying to capture it for someone else to see.

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Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: Grace ODA

The post 7 Things Your 700 Facebook Selfie Photos Say About You appeared first on EcoSalon.