‘Selfie’ courses are now being taught in colleges....

People once lived without selfies. Now selfies are taken all over the world. Selfies are everywhere, and almost everyone is taking selfies and posting them to social media. After all, why take a selfie and not share it? Selfies have become so popular that even entire semester courses are centered around selfies, according to MSN on Sunday.

A selfie is a self-portrait photograph that is taken with a digital camera or camera phone held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies have become popular on social networking services such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Instagram has over 53 million photos tagged with the hashtag #selfie. The word “selfie” was mentioned in Facebook status updates over 368,000 times during a one-week period in October 2013. During the same period on Twitter, the hashtag #selfie was used in more than 150,000 tweets. Most people know Kim Kardashians published an entire book containing nothing but selfies, according to Amazon.

Eve Bottando, an Indiana University Northwest communications professor, will explore selfies in a 400-level class this fall. Bottando said students will discuss research being done on selfies as well as the questions the pictures raise about our society. Students who have registered for that selfie course are excited to learn more about the popularity of selfies.

BTRread reports that at the University of Southern California, writing professor Mark C. Marino is teaching a course titled #SelfieClass. It is a new spin on his Writing 150: Writing and Critical Reasoning: Identity and Diversity course. Freshman students focus on what selfies say about ethnic, gender, sexual and class identities. One assignment was for the class to write an essay entitled “Know Thy Selfie.” Students were asked to take five selfies and explain their identity through the selfie.

A similar class is available at UCLA. In the Digital Humanities department, Miriam Posner teaches a course called Selfies, Snapchat, and CyberBullies: Coming of Age Online. These colleges are not alone when it comes to selfies as an academic discussion. There’s also a Selfies Research Network composed of an international group of experts who examine the impact selfies have on the social and cultural aspect of today’s world.