You are at a birthday party. The first thing you do before the cake is cut is scream, “Let’s take a selfie with the cake.” We miss no opportunity to take pictures, whether it is selfie or not. In 21st century, the value of pictures has increased a lot. We go shopping, buy a new dress; take a picture and upload on Facebook. We buy a new car or a bike and have to show it to our Facebook friends. We see something amazing; click it and post it on Facebook and many more.
Taking pictures have become very common these days. One of the reason for the boom in taking pictures trend is mobile phones. Now mobile phones are available in variety range of prices and are very affordable. These mobile phones have introduced handy cameras, which makes it easy for everyone to take pictures. Statistics shows that 83% of mobile phones have camera on the planet and 90% people use only phone cameras.
Why taking pictures has become so viral? One of the reason is social networking sites. If we just talk about selfies, over one million selfies are taken in a year and 48% of them are posted on Facebook, 27% through Whatsapp and texts, 9% on Twitter, and 8% on Instagram. If there were no social networking sites, the number of pictures we take might have been a lot less.
The trend has its negatives too. Teenagers and children post on social networking sites to seek attention of their friends. It sometimes exposes them to abusive comments. And not getting compliments and likes that they expect, leads to low esteem as researches are showing. It has become a competition nowadays.
There are positives as well; this trend has brought a renewed interest among the youngsters about photography. Many are building photography careers through the social networking sites.
It is great that we have cameras to capture our precious moments of life, but we need to be careful how we are using it. However, do not irritate people by saying, “Please take one more picture of me.” Take pictures, save it as precious memories as they will become one day.