Popularity

In today's digital age, selfies have become a global phenomenon. Millions of people, especially young adults, spend countless hours capturing and sharing images of themselves. This trend reflects a growing desire for self-expression, social validation, and personal branding. Here are the most current stats as of the end of 2024:

• 92 million selfies are taken every day.
• Individuals spend 54 hours a year (or 7 minutes a day) taking selfies.
• The average “selfie-taker” is 24 years old.
• Women take 1.5 times more selfies than men.
• A full 95% of youth have taken selfies, compared to 63% of those aged 35–54 and only 44% of people over 55.
• Roughly 33% of pictures snapped by 18 to 24-year-olds are self-portraits.
• Millennials are forecast to capture around 25,700 selfies over their lifetime.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Kind of makes you think that the world was a little less narcissistic when we had to pay for film.

David Crosby, the lead singer for Crosby, Stills and Nash., became one of the most successful rock musicians of all time. But even at nearly 80 years old, Crosby could not stop hitting the road and promoting his music. He was worth over $40 million. And his wife did not want him to travel, but his entire sense of significance was wrapped in his music.

In a film about his life, Crosby expressed a lot of regrets. “People ask me if I got regrets,” he said. “Yeah, I got a huge regret about the time I wasted being smashed. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of dying. And I'm close. And I don't like it. I'd like to have more time—a lot more time.”

Crosby tells his interviewer that music “is the only thing I can contribute, the only thing I got to offer.” Then toward the end of the film, he raises the volume of his voice and the intensity of his delivery with these summarizing words: “The one thing I can do is make music. Myself. So, I'm trying really hard to do that.” His interviewer asks, “To prove yourself?” Crosby responds, “That I'm worth a [expletive].”

In November 2019, Coldplay released their eighth album, Everyday Life. In twenty years of professional music, it was the first time that any of Coldplay’s records came with the famous “Parental Advisory” sticker. The whole of the album’s profanity came from three seemingly random “f-bombs.” Not only had Coldplay never had an explicit content warning on any album before. They had never even featured a single profanity on any of their full-length LPs before Everyday Life.

Less than a year later, Taylor Swift released Folklore. The same exact thing happened. Despite a 15+ year history of recording that featured zero strong profanity, Folklore earned the black and white sticker for featuring multiple uses of the f-word. This started a trend for Swift: Every album released since has the same profanity and the same explicit content warning (as is common in the industry, the albums each have a “clean” version that edits out the harshest words).

Both Coldplay and Taylor Swift have historically appealed to a younger, more sensitive demographic. They have a long and successful history of selling their music without profanity.

Tech writer Samuel D. Jones offers the following observations on the use of profanity by Coldplay, Swift, and other artists:

We live in an era where the combination of authenticity and vice means that we are seeing some examples of performative offense. Performative offense is what happens when people indulge in vice less out of a sincere desire to indulge it, and more out of a desire to sell their image in the public square. It’s because many modern Americans now associate vice with authentic lives that leaders and those who aspire to leadership may flaunt vulgar or antisocial behavior on the grounds that such things make them “real” to the masses.

In other words, it’s cool to be bad. It’s cool to sin a little.

On a recent episode of The Howard Stern Show, the “shock-jock” host asked his guest, music legend Paul Simon, questions about music, life, art, and anything else that came to mind. Stern rose to fame with his exaltation of immorality and self-adulation. At the end of the interview, Stern said:

Paul, just give me one last answer. You seem very wise. You’ve lived through everything. You’ve created great masterpieces. Is there a God? Because I need to know. I’m getting older. Is this it for me? Am I going to die and that’s it or am I going somewhere? And please answer it in a serious manner.

Simon responded,

This is my feeling about God or Creator. The planet that I’m living on is so beautiful and the universe is so awe-inspiring. If that is the work of a creator, I say, “Thanks so much. I really love your work on the universe. Excellent work, coming from me, Paul Simon, to you, I really dig what you’re doing.” If it turns out that there’s another explanation for creation, I’m still unbelievably grateful for my existence. I still think it’s amazing. If it turns out, I thought it was God but it’s some other explanation, it doesn’t matter to me ….

Then, Stern interrupted, “But it’s so cruel. We have this existence and then we have to disappear. It’s hard.”

Actress and former Seinfeld star (as Elaine) Julia Louis-Dreyfus has had moments when tragedy and comedy get put in a blender. Monday, September 18, 2017, was one of them. Louis-Dreyfus and the hit TV show Veep had triumphed at the Emmys the night before. By morning, her doctor was on the phone telling her she had cancer. The first thing she did after hanging up was double over with laughter.

She said, “I mean, it felt like it was written. It felt like it was a horrible black comedy. And then it sort of morphed into crying hysterically.” [But she was also] terrified. “You just simply don’t consider it for yourself, you know, that’s sort of the arrogance of human beings. But of course, at some point, we’re all going to bite it.”

Augustin Lignier, a photographer in Paris, created a photo booth for rats. He took inspiration from B.F. Skinner, the famous researcher who made The Skinner Box, designed to dispense food pellets when rats pushed a designated lever.

It became one of the most well-known experiments in psychology. Reward-seeking rats became lever-pressing pros, pushing the bar down over and over again in exchange for food, drugs, or even a gentle electric zap directly to the pleasure center of the brain.

Mr. Lignier built his own version of a Skinner Box—a tall, transparent tower with an attached camera—and released two pet-store rats inside. Whenever the rats pressed the button inside the box, they got a small dose of sugar and the camera snapped their photo. The resulting images were immediately displayed on a screen, where the rats could see them. (“But honestly I don’t think they understood it,” Mr. Lignier said.)

The rodents quickly became enthusiastic button pushers. But then the rewards became more unpredictable. Although the rats were still photographed every time they hit the button, the sweet treats came only once in a while, by design. These kinds of intermittent rewards can be very powerful, keeping animals glued to their slot machines as they await their next jackpot.

In the face of these unpredictable rewards, the rats ignored the sugar even when it did arrive, and just kept pressing the button anyway. To Mr. Lignier, the parallel is obvious. “Digital and social media companies use the same concept to keep the attention of the viewer as long as possible,” he said.

Indeed, social media has been described as “a Skinner Box for the modern human,” doling out periodic, unpredictable rewards—a like, a follow, a promising romantic match—that keep us glued to our phones.

Singer-songwriter and author Sandra McCracken writes in an issue of CT magazine:

Greek mythology may not be a guide to the Christian life, but I appreciate the clever commentary the ancient stories offer. I was recently reminded of Narcissus, the young man who neglected all other loves and physical needs so he could stare endlessly at his own reflection. Narcissus eventually dies while sitting by the reflection pool—the tragic and ironic conclusion to his selfish love.

The old, dark comedy still applies—maybe especially applies—to our modern ego and pride. We have more than just pools and mirrors to contend with. ... Aided by our phones and social media, many of us spend more time with our reflections than even Narcissus did. The overwhelming majority of Americans now own smartphones. And with billions of mobile devices in circulation around the world, the situation is the same in many other countries. We are a selfie society, encouraged to view and post about ourselves often, in hopes of attracting more likes and boosting our “brand.”

To see only ourselves and to spend life captivated by our own dim radiance is, in effect, to die. And death is always a tragedy. To see God, however, is to see resurrection and new life. When we look to Jesus to remember more fully our true worth, we gain freedom from vain self-reflection, knowing instead that we belong to the one Source of true delight.

After so many years of fame, the actress Angelina Jolie has resigned herself to some elements of its bargain. The constant gaze of paparazzi means other people have chosen how they want to see her.

Jolie says, “Since I was young, people liked the part of me that’s pretty tough and maybe a bit wild—that’s the part that I think people enjoy. I’m not the one [who] you want to hear about my pain or my sadness. You know, that’s not entertaining.”

Jolie plans to eventually leave L.A. “I grew up in quite a shallow place,” she says. “Of all the places in the world, Hollywood is not a healthy place. So, you seek authenticity.”

Kaylee and Mike Low have four children. When their oldest son, now aged 14, started asking for a cell phone back in the fourth grade, they both said no.

Mrs. Low said, “He was really noticing his peers getting smartphones. But we weren't naïve to the fact that a cell phone would increase the risk of exposure to pornography, and other risks (such as the effects on mental health and the developing brain). So, we just kind of had this gut feeling that it wasn't the right timing."

It became a hot topic of family conversation. Sixth grade was probably the hardest year for him in this process. There were 34 kids, and he was the only one without a smartphone.

At the times when their son grew frustrated, Mr. and Mrs. Low "got better at teaching him" why they wanted to wait and made space for the teen to express his feelings. Mrs. Low said, "I think we just really tried to listen to him, tried to validate his feelings.” They told him, “We're doing it because we love you, and we want what's best for you,” instead of it coming across as being bossy or being told what to do.

However, in 7th grade, the teen quit asking for a cell phone altogether. He'd noticed that some of his classmates, who were often up gaming all night, were more anxious than they used to be, couldn't regulate their emotions, or seemed disengaged from the world around them. Some of them had lost interest in extracurricular activities and "really seemed unhappy."

When his parents asked him where he felt the benefits were, he said that he “doesn't have to carry the world around in his pocket.” He said that kids at school are stressed out about how many likes they get, or what's going on in some random part of the world. So, he feels a sense of freedom. He finds joy in outdoor activities or extracurriculars. He's driven to succeed in life.

Mindful of his future needs, the Lows now plan to introduce their eldest to a cell phone gradually. They are preparing him for adulthood when he doesn’t live with his family.

Now in 9th grade he is thanking his parents, after five years of freedom from screens and the dangers of untethered access to the internet.

In an article in The Atlantic, Derek Thompson explores “How Anxiety Became Content.” He reveals that this new “genre” on social media is surging. The TikTok hashtag #Trauma has more than six billion views and over 5,500 podcasts have the word “trauma” in their title. Thompson suggests that our consumption of such material may be backfiring. He writes:

Darby Saxbe, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California, said that for many young people, claiming an anxiety crisis or post-traumatic stress disorder has become like a status symbol. Saxbe said, “I worry that for some people, it’s become an identity marker that makes people feel special and unique. That’s a big problem because this modern idea that anxiety is an identity gives people a fixed mindset, telling them this is who they are and will be in the future.”

On the contrary, she said, therapy works best when patients come into sessions believing that they can get better. That means believing that anxiety is treatable, modifiable, and malleable—all the things a fixed identity is not.

She went on to say, “I’m very pro-therapy. ... But we may have overcorrected from an era when mental health was shameful to talk about to an era when some vulnerable people surround themselves with conversations and media about anxiety and depression. This makes them more vigilant about symptoms and problems, which makes them more likely to problematize normal daily stress. In turn this makes them move toward a (mindset) where they think there is always something wrong with them that needs their attention, which causes them to pull back from social engagement, which causes even more distress and anxiety.”

The CDC’s bi-annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey (2023) showed that most teen girls (57%) now say that they experience persistent sadness or hopelessness (up from 36% in 2011), and 30% of teen girls now say that they have seriously considered suicide (up from 19% in 2011). Boys are doing badly too, but their rates of depression and anxiety are not as high, and their increases since 2011 are smaller.

What are the causes behind this concerning trend? It’s complex, but in a thorough overview of hundreds of studies, here’s how researcher Jon Haidt summarizes the data:

There is one giant, obvious, international, and gendered cause: Social media. Instagram was founded in 2010. The iPhone 4 was released then too—the first smartphone with a front-facing camera. In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram, and that’s the year that its user base exploded. By 2015, it was becoming normal for 12-year-old girls to spend hours each day taking selfies, editing selfies, and posting them for friends, enemies, and strangers to comment on, while also spending hours each day scrolling through photos of other girls and fabulously wealthy female celebrities with (seemingly) vastly superior bodies and lives. The hours girls spent each day on Instagram were taken from sleep, exercise, and time with friends and family. What did we think would happen to them?

Music icon Bono, lead singer of the popular band U2, tells the Atlantic magazine that lately God has been leading him to desire silence and listen to Him more. Bono points out that Elijah had to go to the cave to hear God, and God was heard not in the thunder and the wind but in the sound of silence.

All of his life, he has reinvented himself. Now he thinks it may be time to do it again. Bono says, “Music might be a jealous god. It was always the easiest thing for me. I wake up with melodies in my head. But now I feel more like: ‘Shut up and listen. If you want to take it to the next level, you may have to rethink your life.’”

Bono has been grappling with the challenges to his faith since the band first achieved success: "How do you reconcile the humility of faith with the egotism of superstardom, the purity of the Holy Spirit with the material excess of show business, the drive to achieve musical greatness with the posture of surrender to grace?"

His focus once again is to surrender his life: “It’s just out of my reach. I’m getting to the place where I do not have to do, but just be. It’s trying to transcend myself. It’s like my antidote to me. The antidote to me is surrender.”

The writer asks whether Bono can achieve the perfect stillness he craves. It’s hard to know the answer to that. At one point he told me that throughout his whole life, he’s been searching for home, and that lately he has come to realize that home is not a place, but a person. The writer says, “I neglected to ask the follow-up question. Is that person (his wife) Ali? Jesus? Any random soul he happens to be in front of that day? Maybe all of the above.”

Despite the massive popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in the Lord of the Rings in book and film versions, over the years, the books have received biting criticism from critics.

One early reviewer dismissed it as “an allegorical adventure story for very leisured boys.” This critic sarcastically said that we should all take to the streets proclaiming “Adults of all ages! Unite against the infantalist invasion.”

Another critic declared it “juvenile trash.”

In 1961, a third critic called it “ill-written” and “childish” and declared, not a little prematurely that it had already “passed into a merciful oblivion.”

Twenty years later, another critic, was hopeful that Tolkien’s “cult status is diminishing.” This critic also argued that Tolkien’s popularity is due to class distinctions. The intelligent “bookish class” doesn’t read Lord of the Rings. Instead, only lower-class people read it—those “to whom a long read does not come altogether easily.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

People did not see the value of Jesus, but criticized and rejected him but God made him King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Wall Street Journal writer Joseph Epstein notes that the opinion poll has been around for more than a century. They gained authority in the 1940s with the polling methods of George Gallup. Now we put way too much stock in opinion polls. Epstein writes, “So endemic is polling that it feels as if what a politician does is less important than whether the public approves or disapproves.”

President Abraham Lincoln is an example of how to seek wise counsel and input from others without letting it run your life. Epstein writes:

Early in his presidency he set aside morning office hours to receive visitors, many seeking favors or attempting to exert influence, or merely wishing to shake the hand of the nation’s leader. … These visits … offered the president the opportunity, in these days before scientific public opinion polling, to get some idea of how ordinary people felt about him and his administration. Yet Lincoln, aware as he was of public sentiment, never allowed it ultimately to alter his policies or principles, which is one of the reasons he was a great man.

For instance, some critics blasted his 272-word Gettysburg Address for being too short. But Lincoln stood by the speech, and as we all know now, it became one of the greatest political speeches of all time.

Unlike Macaulay Culkin, who starred in the famous Christmas movie Home Alone, his younger brother Kieran turned down multiple opportunities to be a child star. He learned by observation that he didn’t want a life of fame—knowing it could lead to things like substance abuse, court guardianship battles, and the like.

We might be tempted to view the life choices of famous people like the Culkin brothers from a distance. But maybe we’re looking into a collective mirror. Today, fame is not just something that happens to stars, child or otherwise. Thanks to the age of social media, many of us are turning into mini-stars, with the only real difference being the size of our audience.

The leaked “Facebook Files,” which discuss the inner workings of the social media company, include data about the harm Instagram usage inflicts on the self-image of adolescents. Every child or teen faces a fear of judgment from their peers. They also fear being exiled from their social group.

However, the world of social media seems to heighten these dynamics—where almost everyone is followed by a kind of paparazzi, exposing and subjecting us to the approval or disapproval of our peers, acquaintances, and often complete strangers.

Philosopher Alain de Botton writes, “The subconscious argument goes, if I’m famous, I will be free from facing any rejection or judgment. I will have an instant and safe community.” However, de Botton says, the exact opposite is true: “Fame makes people more, not less, vulnerable, because it throws them open to unlimited judgment.”

In a recent issue of Women's Health, actress Lauren Cohan (Maggie Greene on The Walking Dead) explains how she discovered a way to avoid the comparison trap. The article opens:

While scrolling through Instagram, Cohan unwittingly found herself competing as a contestant in The Comparison Game. You know the rules: Endlessly swipe through friends’ and followers’ successes, then measure your own professional wins and happiness against theirs. Now, if you’ve ever played, you probably know the harsh reality of this game—you can never win.

Lauren’s pause from social media was a key stop on her path to positive thinking. Then a close friend gave her a piece of advice that prompted even more emotional digging. “You’ll never be happy as long as you’re worrying about yourself.”

Lauren says, “It’s because I’m letting my ego spin out of control. I worry about job security, losing something, not getting something, I thought I was supposed to achieve. I just didn’t want that inner monologue anymore.”

Now, when Lauren’s feeling anxious, she chooses to redirect. “I see where I can be useful somewhere else.” She checks in with friends and volunteers at the Atlanta Music Project (an after-school program where kids get help with homework and take music lessons). She explains: “When I’m not focused on my output, I immediately feel so much relief. It’s a relief to remember that you’re a speck, and that there is a big picture, and to get over yourself.”

In other words, she has found that the solution to depression and anxiety just might not be more focus on self, but on others.

For decades the media in all its forms have created celebrities that are framed, groomed, and packaged solely for the purpose of dissemination through mass media. Many people, some living frustrated lives, live vicariously through the allegedly exciting lives of these glamorous personalities, representing hopes and dreams personally unfulfilled.

The result is that we have created synthetic celebrities whom we worship, however briefly, because they vicariously act out our noblest or basest desires. For impressionable young people, “celebrity worship syndrome” has resulted in:

Symptoms of depression and anxiety. Lower levels of critical thinking and cognitive abilities Impaired social skills. Maladaptive daydreaming that interferes with work, school, or relationships. Desire for fame, which is often linked with a lack of self-acceptance. Compulsive buying and materialism. Difficulties with romantic relationships.

Pro basketball star Kevin Durant is one of the most famous athletes in the world (at least as of 2021). Durant is a four-time scoring champion, a two-time finals MVP, and an 11-time All-Star. By any measure, he’s one of the defining athletes of our time. His decisions about where to play, and which teammates to play with, have thrust whole franchises up to glory and sent others plummeting down.

But surprisingly, Durant is well aware of the fleeting nature of his fame. In a 2021 interview he said, “The world is bigger than my little box, I’m not going to be playing this game forever. So I can’t be expected to stay in this box.” He laughed. “Like: ‘This is the K.D. box.’ Who gives a [expletive]? It’s been billions of people on this earth. We really are small, if you look at it from a universe perspective.”

Author Gad Saad is one of the leading voices exposing the harm and folly of political correctness in the US and Canada. In his most recent book, he explores the current futile practice known as “virtue signaling.” Most often on social media, people express moral outrage just by hash-tagging a cause and doing nothing else. Just one example is the #BringBackOurGirls, that was used by millions globally because of the kidnapping of Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram. The only thing that came out of all the virtue signaling was the feeding of one’s ego and the social message that they are progressive and a good person.

Saad gives an example of a public display of valor known as “costly signaling”:

The Sateré-Mawé, an indigenous Amazonian tribe, have a very powerful way of differentiating prospective warriors from their fake counterparts. They sedate bullet ants, whose sting is akin to being shot, and then weave them into leaf gloves. Initiates wear the gloves for several minutes and must withstand the stings of hundreds of these ants as they come out of their sedated torpor. One sting causes unimaginable pain, and yet the inductees must withstand the suffering with restrained dignity (they cannot holler).

One such ordeal would be sufficient to test anyone’s toughness, and yet the young men must endure this tribulation twenty separate times. If all it took to become a warrior was the completion of ten push-ups, nearly everyone could complete the task. ... (It is) a rite of passage that serves as an honest signal of toughness and courage, and you’ve solved the problem of identifying the fakers.

You can watch the YouTube video of the tribal ritual here.

Consider the case of Johann Sebastian Bach. Born in 1685 to a long line of prominent musicians in Germany, Bach quickly distinguished himself as a musical genius. In his 65 years, he published more than 1,000 compositions for all the available instrumentations of his day. Early in his career, Bach was considered an astoundingly gifted organist and improviser. Commissions rolled in; royalty sought him out; young composers emulated his style. He enjoyed real prestige.

But it didn’t last—in no small part because his career was overtaken by musical trends ushered in by, among others, his own son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, known as C.P.E. to the generations that followed. C.P.E. exhibited the musical gifts his father had. He mastered the baroque idiom, but eventually C.P.E.’s prestige boomed while his father’s music became passé.

Bach easily could have become embittered. Instead, he chose to redesign his life, moving from innovator to instructor. He spent a good deal of his last 10 years writing The Art of Fugue. This was not a famous or popular work in his time, but one intended to teach the techniques of the baroque to his children and students—and to any future generations that might be interested. In his later years, he lived a quieter life as a teacher and a family man. Bach died beloved, fulfilled, and—though less famous than he once had been—respected.