"Selfie" - in China pic copyright Satish Sharma

It is more than just the family photo album that the 'selfies' are killing off. The very foundations of Family are sinking.

The death of the family photo album

BY:KAYA BURGESS
From:The Times
June 17, 2013 2:43PM

HIDDEN away in dusty lofts and cluttered cupboards, the family photo album has for generations been the final resting place for embarrassing baby pictures and washed-out holiday snaps. But now photographs have a new graveyard - our mobile phones and digital cameras.

Hundreds of millions of photographs taken each year are never downloaded, with 34 per cent of people admitting that they do not have the time or know-how.

In an age of sharing - and perhaps over-sharing - on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, only 23 per cent of photos taken in the United Kingdom now end up in a traditional album. An estimated 631 million photographs each year, around a third of the total, will never grace the pages of a social network, let alone the pages of an album, remaining forever on memory cards and microchips.

A survey of 3,000 people by Samsung also suggested that some snappers are far from restrained.

One in ten of those questioned said that they shared their photographs within 60 seconds of taking them, using internet-enabled devices to post pictures straight to their social network pages.

A further 52 per cent share their photos online within a week; a fifth admitted that they take pictures only so that they can put them online. Samsung estimates that 1.9 billion photos are taken in Britain each year, with around 328 million of them shared on the internet.

Like Narcissus with an iPhone, almost a third of pictures taken by 18 to 24-year-olds are “selfies”: pictures they have taken of themselves. The trend for these vanity shots was more common among men than among women.

While those of us born before the advent of digital photography still live in fear that the album of baby pictures will be brought out at family gatherings, the children of the future have even more to worry about.

Only 13 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds have ever used a photo album, suggesting that embarrassing childhood photos will now be shared on Facebook.

Simon Stanford, from Samsung, said that 91 per cent of adults regularly use social networks, which has made sites such as Instagram and Facebook much more popular than old-fashioned photo albums for sharing pictures.

The survey also found that women in the UK are three times more likely to take a picture of their pet than of their friends.

The Times]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-death-of-the-family-photo-album/story-fnb64oi6-1226665063666