The Selfie Score

I was on the beach in Bali, crowd-watching the hundreds of amateur photographers clicking away with their phones. Some were obsessed with the scenery. Others were obsessed with themselves, with the scenery playing a supporting role. It got me wondering.

Not about photography. About narcissism.

More specifically, I began to wonder whether there might be a crude, potentially insulting way to measure it.

A breakthrough in beach psychology

I call it the Selfie Score.

It is very simple. Open your camera roll and estimate the ratio of selfies to photos of other people, animals, meals, children, books, sunsets, cocktails, or whatever else makes up your life. The question is not whether you take selfies. Of course you do. The question is whether your phone suggests that you are the main attraction in your own existence.

This is not proper science. It is beach science, which is still science, but with waves and sunscreen.

Still, I think it captures something.

The camera roll does not lie

Some people have very low Selfie Scores. Their phones are full of dogs, children, family holidays, or all-night rave parties (if under thirty). These are outward-looking souls, or possibly just people whose dogs have replaced humans in their lives.

Others sit in the middle. A healthy democratic mix. A few holiday selfies, a few family shots, one suspiciously flattering gym mirror effort, then back to normal life.

Then there are the high scorers. The true believers. Their camera roll looks like an election campaign in which they are both candidate and the media department. Every meal is them near a meal. Every sunset is them near a sunset. Every beach, temple, rooftop bar, and airport lounge has been gently repurposed as a supporting act.

The exhausting business of being yourself

Obviously, selfies aren’t all bad. Plenty of perfectly decent people take lots of selfies. But I do think the idea points to something real. Narcissism is not just unattractive. It is tiring.

That is its less discussed flaw.

We often think of narcissism as vanity, arrogance, peacocking, the full theatrical package. But more often, it’s simply too much focus on oneself. Too much attention turned inward. Too much watching how you look, where you land, your rank, and how you come across. It’s tough to be happy when half your mental energy is spent on the brand management of your own face.

That, I suspect, is why narcissism quietly steals happiness. It traps attention in the least restorative place possible: the self. Not the self in some grand philosophical sense, but the ordinary, everyday self. My image. My status. My lighting. My importance. A person can disappear into that hall of mirrors and call it self-esteem.

Meanwhile, the sunset was trying its best

Some of the nicer bits of life require the opposite. Curiosity. Absorption. Amusement. Awe. Interest in other people. Even a decent holiday, properly enjoyed, usually depends on forgetting yourself for a minute. A sunset is better when it is allowed to be a sunset, not a backlight for your cheekbones.

So perhaps the Selfie Score, ridiculous though it is, works as a tiny private prompt. Not, “Am I a narcissist?” That is too dramatic. More, “How much of my attention gets dragged back to me?” Because that habit, in small doses, is universal. We all do it. Some of us just document it with better lighting.

In the interests of scientific transparency

And I do mean we.

All this lofty reflection didn’t stop me from taking a selfie of my own. In the interest of scientific transparency, I’ve included it above. It would be awkward to write an essay about the Selfie Score while pretending I am somehow above it.

So no, I am not proposing a new diagnostic tool. But I am suggesting this: if your camera roll shows that you are the main character in nearly every shot, it might be worth asking if your focus has become a little too self-centered.

Not because narcissism is ugly, though it often is, but because it’s a poor path to happiness. I believe a person becomes happier when they’re less captivated by themselves and more interested in everything around them.

Even in Bali.

Especially in Bali, where the scenery is doing quite a lot of the heavy lifting.