With the digital age upon us, it appears that everything is in flux. Even the venerable old photograph—an art form that was birthed way back in the 1830s and has remained pretty constant ever since—is changing in some pretty dramatic ways nowadays.
Cameras. Film. Photo albums. Gathering friends and family for some commemorative shots. Those elements and practices all used to be part and parcel of the typical snap-a-photo experience. But according to a new poll commissioned by Samsung in the United Kingdom, that isn’t the case anymore. Smartphones and “selfies” are taking over.
The study found that among the upcoming generation of 18- to 24-year-olds, a whopping 30% of all photographs are taken by someone holding a cell phone at arm’s length from their own smiling solo mug. Sure, they might deign to squeeze a friend in at the edge of the frame every once in a while, but most of the time it’s just the subject, her camera and the appropriate toothy smile or flirty pursed duck lips. Although, surprisingly, the poll suggested that men in that age group take more self pics than women (minus the pursed puckers, I’d guess).
And the old photo album? Please. Don’t make me roll my eyes in a perfectly photogenic way while I tilt my iPhone just so. The poll found that one in five of those self-shot-pic-lovers take photos with the intention of posting them on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram—with 10% of those saying their snaps were uploaded onto a website in less than 60 seconds after they had been shot on their phone. In fact, only 13% of those teens and twentysomethings polled had ever even thought of sticking pictures in something as antiquated as a photo album.
Just in case you’re thinking, “Well, that’s must be because nobody’s really taking pictures much anymore,” uh, you would be wrong. National Geographic looked at the swelling numbers of digital phone-snapped photos in the US and concluded that in 2011 we took around 80 billion digital snapshots. And they estimate that by 2015 we Americans will be reaching for the phone picture button somewhere in the neighborhood of 105 billion times a year.
Mama, that’s a whole lotta duck lips.
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