“But first, let me take a selfie”. We live in a generation where it’s socially acceptable to be narcissistic. Social validation is a component of our daily lives. We might forget this, but social media wasn’t created to express our vanity or for others to stroke our ego. Social media was created to share content, make connections and to foster a community.

Forming actual and worthwhile connections is no longer a primary use of social media. Understanding our friends better and how they live their lives is only a secondary purpose. The key drive of social media these days is self-promotion. How can we make create the best possible social image of ourselves. How do we make our lives seem interesting.

Instead of choosing a profile picture that includes our family or friends, many of us will choose a picture that enhances our beauty and thus increases our social desirability. Social media might not have created the shallow world, but it definitely increases the “visibility” of that world.

Rather than worry about how our friends are doing, we post a picture of our ordinary and honestly unexciting lunch. Rather than worry about if we actually know anything real about the people we “connect” with, we worry about how many likes we have on that picture of our lunch.

I think we could talk all day about the narcissistic nature of our generation and the different sub cultures such as the gym community that help foster it. However a key implication for businesses is that, if they can successfully channel this vanity into a smart social media strategy, it could be quite beneficial for them. The use channels such as Snapchat and Instagram could be used in innovative ways to utilize the narcissistic nature of the world to raise brand awareness and sales.