The Selfie Generation

"Eler's book alights on the source of the selfie's power: It is the easiest way to assert one's humanity in our hyper-networked world. Perhaps our much-fussed-over narcissism is not a flaw but a survival tactic."—The New York Times

Whether it's Kim Kardashian uploading picture after picture to Instagram or your roommate posting a mid-vacation shot to Facebook, selfies receive mixed reactions. But are selfies more than, as many critics lament, a symptom of a self-absorbed generation?

Millennial Alicia Eler's The Selfie Generation is the first book to delve fully into this ubiquitous and much-maligned part of social media, including why people take them in the first place and the ways they can change how we see ourselves. Eler argues that selfies are just one facet of how we can use digital media to create a personal brand in the modern age. More than just a picture, they are an important part of how we live today.

Eler examines all aspects of selfies, online social networks, and the generation that has grown up with them. She looks at how the boundaries between people’s physical and digital lives have blurred with social media; she explores questions of privacy, consent, ownership, and authenticity; and she points out important issues of sexism and double standards wherein women are encouraged to take them but then become subject to criticism and judgment. Alicia discusses the selfie as a paradox—both an image with potential for self-empowerment, yet also a symbol of complacency within surveillance culture The Selfie Generation explores just how much social media has changed the ways that people connect, communicate, and present themselves to the world.

A recent transplant from Los Angeles, Alicia Eler is the visual art critic/reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she covers art in and around the Twin Cities. Eler's cultural criticism and reporting have appeared in various publications, including the Guardian, GLAMOUR, New York Magazine, CNN, LA Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, New Inquiry, Hyperallergic, Aperture, MAXIM, Art21 magazine, and Artforum. Her work is quoted in the New York Times, New Yorker, BuzzFeed, Gawker (RIP), and VICE, and she/they cited as a selfie expert in the Washington Post and New York Magazine. Visit her on Twitter and Instagram at @aliciaeler.

"Eler's book alights on the source of the selfie's power: It is the easiest way to assert one's humanity in our hyper-networked world. Perhaps our much-fussed-over narcissism is not a flaw but a survival tactic."—The New York Times


"Through a mix of reportage and personal reflection, Eler gives a snapshot of the snapshot, situating the selfie in a variety of cultural milieux: intimacy and relationships, journalism and activism, memes and savvy advertising."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"I am taking a picture of myself as I write this blurb about Alicia's neat new book addressing the joys and hazards of phone-operated self-reflection. And in taking this selfie, I find my selfie." —Maria Bamford, comedian

"Eler a selfie semiotician. Her book is in defense of millennials and all those who dare to take a selfie."—Wired Magazine

"In this kaleidoscopic exploration of the selfie, Alicia Eler challenges the popular view of the selfie as a narcissistic act. Part Millennial apologist, part cultural sage, Eler transforms this work of personal memoir into a meditation on the deep need of human beings for social connection. The Selfie Generation exposes the level of privacy we're willing to sacrifice in order not only to meet our basic need of food and shelter, but one another." —Elaine Romero, playwright, assistant professor, School of Theatre Film and Television, University of Arizona

"Fascinating, provocative, entertaining and enlightening, and likely to be the foundation of all future books on this subject."—Chicago Tribune

"Alicia Eler breaks with clichés to imagine the selfie as a double-edged sword, at once an empowering and vulnerable phenomenon, characteristic of the digital age."—BBC

"A timely addition to growing research on selfie culture. Weaving first-person narrative and conversations with tech and social media experts, the Minnesota Star Tribune journalist offers a wide-ranging exploration of the effects of the selfie on our cultural relationship to technology, privacy, and gender."—Chicago Reader

"From activists recording themselves through what Eler calls “sousveillance” to artists exploring how social media users craft their own self image, Selfie Generation uses these images to explore the boundaries of the Internet and the physical world, along with questions of consent and copyright. Through interviews with both professionals and friends, Eler toes the line between a personal essay and a scholarly resource."—Minneapolis Journal

"Eler herself emerges as an open sharer, seizing and maintaining the reader’s attention. . . . [The Selfie Generation] works to offer glimpses into her busy life for us to explore, search, and like. And we do because it comes alive confidently, disclosing a set of experiences marked by changes imbricated in contemporary culture. Eler, attentive to the forces at work in the selfieverse, shares and celebrates her own vulnerability outside obvious boundaries and in the realm where privacy is always at risk."—University of Hawai'i Press

"Eler's book alights on the source of the selfie's power: It is the easiest way to assert one's humanity in our hyper-networked world. Perhaps our much-fussed-over narcissism is not a flaw but a survival tactic."—The New York Times


"Through a mix of reportage and personal reflection, Eler gives a snapshot of the snapshot, situating the selfie in a variety of cultural milieux: intimacy and relationships, journalism and activism, memes and savvy advertising."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"I am taking a picture of myself as I write this blurb about Alicia's neat new book addressing the joys and hazards of phone-operated self-reflection. And in taking this selfie, I find my selfie." —Maria Bamford, comedian

"Eler a selfie semiotician. Her book is in defense of millennials and all those who dare to take a selfie."—Wired Magazine

"In this kaleidoscopic exploration of the selfie, Alicia Eler challenges the popular view of the selfie as a narcissistic act. Part Millennial apologist, part cultural sage, Eler transforms this work of personal memoir into a meditation on the deep need of human beings for social connection. The Selfie Generation exposes the level of privacy we're willing to sacrifice in order not only to meet our basic need of food and shelter, but one another." —Elaine Romero, playwright, assistant professor, School of Theatre Film and Television, University of Arizona

"Fascinating, provocative, entertaining and enlightening, and likely to be the foundation of all future books on this subject."—Chicago Tribune

"Alicia Eler breaks with clichés to imagine the selfie as a double-edged sword, at once an empowering and vulnerable phenomenon, characteristic of the digital age."—BBC

"A timely addition to growing research on selfie culture. Weaving first-person narrative and conversations with tech and social media experts, the Minnesota Star Tribune journalist offers a wide-ranging exploration of the effects of the selfie on our cultural relationship to technology, privacy, and gender."—Chicago Reader

"From activists recording themselves through what Eler calls “sousveillance” to artists exploring how social media users craft their own self image, Selfie Generation uses these images to explore the boundaries of the Internet and the physical world, along with questions of consent and copyright. Through interviews with both professionals and friends, Eler toes the line between a personal essay and a scholarly resource."—Minneapolis Journal