Selfitis, selfie addiction, Twitteritis: Irresistible appeal of medical terminology for problematic behaviours in the digital age

Abstract

peer reviewedBehaviours that are performed compulsively and repetitively and are associated with certain negative consequences have been a conceptual challenge for psychopathology. They are usually labelled as behavioural addictions, although this term has been vague, misused and applied to an exceptionally wide variety of activities (Starcevic, 2016). A similar trend to medicalise problematic behaviours has appeared more recently, with an emergence of ‘selfitis’ (Balakrishnan and Griffiths, in press). This article draws attention to these troublesome tendencies and aims to shed more light on their origin and implications