In Defense of Selfies

​You read that right, I’m defending selfies—and not because I’m a Millennial who takes them often. (In fact, if you go to my Instagram account, you’ll find just one.)

Chances are, if you’ve scrolled through your newsfeed recently, you’ve happened upon a selfie. The Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2013, a selfie is defined as a photograph taken of yourself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website. Kids these days, right?

On that same newsfeed, you’ll likely see information on birthdays, family milestones and maybe even a post on a recent dinner. And you’ll find some of the tough moments in life on display, posts about divorce, illness or even a death in the family.

We react to this shared news quickly and instinctively, typically by commenting or sharing with our own online community, or just as often by internalizing what we’ve seen. Our reactions can be positive or, sadly, not nice at all. This article from The Wall Street Journal, Why Are We So Rude Online, describes what we already know too well: we are meaner to each other on the internet than we ever would be in person. We’ll leave it to the sociologists to figure out why.

Last week, the reaction to one particular selfie—posted by a victim of the Pittsburgh-area high school stabbings—ranged from supportive to downright cruel. Nate Scimio posted the selfie while still in his hospital gown, his arm bandaged, with a caption that read, “Chillin’ at Children’s.” What Nate’s selfie doesn’t tell you is that he was the one who pulled the fire alarm in the school that morning, alerting students and faculty to the danger and likely saving many lives.

In less than 24 hours after the stabbings, commentary on Nate’s selfie exploded. Many were critical of a seemingly cavalier attitude in the wake of tragedy. You’ll find that reaction and others like it in this Washington Post article that summarized the varied responses the selfie drew on social media. Among them was Mel Robbins, a political commentator for CNN, who wrote an opinion piece in support of Nate’s decision to post the selfie. To Robbins, the selfie was Nate’s way of communicating to his community after a tragedy, of letting his friends know he was okay.

Robbins is exactly right. Selfies have become an efficient communications tool, and Nate’s gesture no doubt provided a great deal of comfort to his friends and family who, through one quick post, could see for themselves that he was truly okay. Even so, we should not have to defend Nate’s selfie. In the face of a tragedy like this one, or other sudden and devastating events—the shooting at Sandy Hook, the bombings at the Boston Marathon—we must resist the temptation to judge. How people react to tragedy is a complex and personal matter and not the occasion for others to publicly respond with characteristic web-based insensitivity.

We live in world that is quick to comment, quick to judge, and technology has given us the capacity to share those emotions often before we’ve had a chance to really think them through. So, one week later, kudos to Nate for his reaction on that scary day that perhaps saved many, many lives. Perhaps the best reaction is to be happy that Nate was alive to take that selfie.