Smartphone cameras are being used 24/7 by millions of people every day. A 2015 report from Gigaom found that the average smartphone user has about 630 photos on their phone. According to PEW Research Center, 24 percent of teens in the United States are reported to be “almost constantly” on their phones. In addition, The Wall Street Journal revealed results from a survey conducted back in 2014 that revealed the most popular social networking apps are visual ones including Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.
Since photo sharing apps have become increasingly popular, people’s relationships with photographs have changed. Now, people have become so addicted to uploading images that they just upload them on a whim, making it nearly impossible to remember what they uploaded. “Image overload” has reportedly occurred during times of general frustration, low anxiety and some form of exhaustion due to a need for upkeep of public image.
Psychologist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University conducted a study that showcased something she called “the photo-taking impairment effect.” In this study, students visited an art museum with only a few of them carrying cameras.
Henkel found that the students with cameras remembered very few objects that they saw compared to the other students who simply looked at them. On the other hand, a different study found that people who took their time with setting up their images such as zooming in didn’t have their memory impaired at all.
Chair and Associate professor of Psychology, Dr. Melissa Terlecki believes that a part of what causes such symptoms is people’s desire to maintain a certain image and appear perfect or the way they want their friends or family to see them as.
“We may be obsessed with perfection and evaluation by others and the process of having to do that is time consuming,” Terlecki said. “I think that we’re obsessed with portraying ourselves a certain way rather than focusing on ourselves.”
Terlecki also adds that people may want to be in touch with other people and portray themselves in a way that will attract their interest and care. She also points out that, depending on the generation, social media may be the main cause as to why people are constantly on their phones because they’re constantly trying to connect with one another.
Terlecki agrees with the fact that constant photo taking can cause memory impairment of what was photographed because taking the picture and posting it online costs cognitive resources. If those resources are devoted on perfecting the post, people aren’t focused on the experience which will prevent them from living in the moment.
Sophomore early childhood education and special education major Gillian Copestick is an avid user of social media and checks her favorite social media sites, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook around 20-30 times a day.
“It’s a way for me to connect with my friends and family, especially the ones I can’t see every day,” Copestick said. “It’s also how kids in my generation stay up to date with a lot of different things.”
Copestick also feels an urge to post on social media constantly because it allows her to express herself and sometimes, she feels that if she doesn’t make a post after a certain period of time, people will unfollow her. However, Copestick claims that she gets exhausted and asks herself why she posts all the time, even when she doesn’t have to or need to. In addition, she admits that there are times where taking pictures has prevented her from being in the moment.
“I noticed I started taking pictures on vacations or at a concert and I was so absorbed on capturing the moment on my phone that I didn’t capture the moment live with my own eyes and ears,” Copestick said.
Junior psychology major Noel Faragalli is typically on social media for about two and a half to three hours every day with Twitter and Snapchat being her top social media platforms. She prefers Twitter because it supplies an endless amount of information that can easily be absorbed through tweets since they have a limited character count. Snapchat, on the other hand, provides users with the opportunity to connect with visual media and posts all sorts of news, including magazine articles and short educational documentaries.
Faragalli also feels pressured to upload to Instagram because it’s about constantly posting pictures to stay active and connected.
“Most celebrities stay consistently active on their pages posting, what looks like, their lavish and desirable lives which gives me the urge to post on my own page,” Fargalli said.
She also feels the need to keep posting because she feels like she has to keep others informed about her life while also catching up with other people’s lives. This is also the reason why she dislikes social media.
Faragalli gets tired of uploading photos to social media because she wants to feel less attached to her phone and not have the urge to tell people about what’s going on in her life. In addition, Faragalli pointed out that social media puts a lot of pressure on people, especially girls.
“There is a whole internet world of what girls should look like or what we should be doing without lives and it’s both intimidating and discouraging,” Faragalli said. “As a whole, the depths of social media could get pretty dark at times.”
Faragalli has also had the experience of forgetting what she photographed before. During her senior year of high school, she had to go to an art museum with a group of classmates, find a couple pieces of art that interested her the most and do a project on them.
“With my love and fascination for art of all kinds, I was captivated by the beauty and uniqueness of it all,” Faragalli said. “However, once I started walking around I began taking out my phone to take pictures of art pieces that I truly admired and pieces that I thought would work well for our project, I realized I did not fully appreciate the art once I took out my phone and it made me upset.”
It appears that if people want to really live in the moment and not feel pressured into capturing pictures of what they see or do, the best course of action is to just leave their phones alone.
“Live in the moment, experience it, put the phone down,” Terlecki said. “You’re more likely to remember it if you’re actually living in it rather than wasting time trying to get a better picture of it.”
