Selfies Are All About Appearance

Nearly 52 percent of selfies taken are about appearance, the Georgia Institute of Technology found in a study. The idea behind the research was to understand how people give statements on their identity by taking and posting selfies. To obtain the data, the institute analysed 2.5 million selfie posts on Instagram during summer 2015 and assigned them to 14 different categories.

Accordingly, photos about appearance were two times more popular than the other categories combined and most often depict the photographer’s make-up, clothes, lips or other individual features. Similarly prevalent are selfies about the person’s ethnicity or nationality accounting for 13 percent within the study. The researchers interpreted this as an indication for the person’s pride in his or her ethnic background.

In general, women (59%) take more selfies than men (41%).