Look for the best angle. Give your camera a tilt of about cer- tain degrees. Check out the background and light source: a flash reflected from a bathroom mirror or flickering lights on a disco night out. Strike a pose. Capture. Then, presto! There goes your selfie shot.

This has been the latest craze in the social networking sites. It appears on updates and statuses of Facebook users. #Selfie has been used by millions of people on Twitter, and Instagram-- which is said to be the “epicenter of the selfie madness” and contains over millions of photos with the hashtag #selfie.

From President Obama and Pope Francis to Beyoncé and Rihanna, everyone has been getting into this craze. In fact, it was added in the dictionary and was declared as the Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year 2013. Isn’t that impressive?

Taking these self-photographs is not just about being narcissistic but is one of the ways to express yourself freely at the advent of social networking sites. It is also one of the ways to boost one's confidence because everyone's got to be confident enough first with their very own self and appearance, before showing the world who they are.

“As how high selfie could boost one's confidence, is also how low it could take one down.” You might hear that the reason why people take selfies is because of plain boredom, but later on, they would say that it’s addicting, especially when they start getting comments like “Gorgeous!” or “You look great!” from people to the extent that they would try to be the someone-else-better kind of person this time, so people could like them more. And so, such filters, pouted lips, sucked-in cheeks go. And then the selfie-ing process repeats again and again. Over and over, selfie people offer themselves for public consumption. And unknowingly, with all the hate from different people, it could eat all their self-confidence up and even them.

After all, it’s still up to you to shape the future of your habit – whether you take selfies for fun, or for compliments. If you fall under the second one, you better rethink of your perspective.