Selfies can kill. They also might cause serious injury. You might say, “Psh, that’s preposterous, it’s not like I’m putting myself in harm’s way when I Snapchat zoomed in pictures of my face to my friends periodically throughout the day.” And you’re probably right. Nevertheless, there is a Wikipedia article dedicated to a dozen or so events in which a person was critically or fatally injured at the expense of getting a sick self-pic (often to commemorate being in the company of firearms…you see where this is going).

Apart from the physical trauma caused by selfies, there’s also the oft-held notion that the upsurge in the taking and sharing of selfies is dangerous to the ego, too. The growing disapproval that some have of the selfie—and the narcissistic traits it stands for—raises the question of how much self-confidence a person is allowed to have before they cross the line to a detrimentally positive self-image: narcissism. But the problem therein lies how to distinguish a rewarding level of self-esteem from an unfavorable line of narcissism: where is the line drawn, and is it possible to get to guarantee the former without revealing signs of the latter?

The popularity of the selfie has evolved in kind with the boom of behemoth social media websites and apps, such as MySpace, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, from the late 2000’s into the early 2010’s. To many, like the doctor-authors of “The Narcissism Epidemic,” an exploration of the rise of narcissism in America published in 2009, selfies and social media are an embodiment of the age of self-obsession that is crippling our place in the global marketplace. Ours is an era hallmarked by soaring self-promotion on social media outlets (through selfies and otherwise) and admiration of celebrities who seem to be non-stop promoting themselves, i.e., the Kardashian family or Kanye West.

So, what’s really so bad about this increase in narcissism—other than perhaps that word itself, which sounds like it’s too serious for the innocence that is our world of selfies and social media? According to “The Narcissism Epidemic,” this upward trend is at the heart of cyberbullying: a criterion of narcissism is the need to receive recognition, which can be achieved by viciously commenting on someone’s YouTube video, or perhaps by throwing shade on someone’s Instagram. The book also cites the breakdown of interpersonal relationships as more commonplace among narcissists today, because such a person with a grandiose sense of self cannot thrive in situations that require extensive empathy. Even the 2008 financial crisis has roots in this developing condition: the overconfidence and greed of those Wall Street workers falls under the umbrella of narcissism. In short, even though “The Narcissism Epidemic” camp recognizes that not everyone is narcissistic, the behavioral shift in some is a threat to everyone.

It seems far-reaching to pin the blame on something like the Snapchat boom for these problems facing America today. But the real problem in this definition of narcissism, and putting it to blame for this whole slew of issues, are the theorized contributing factors of this “epidemic.”

Apart from the Internet and celebrity self-promotion culture, “The Narcissism Epidemic” posits that a key cause of the rise in self-centeredness is the rise of the “self-esteem movement” of the 1980s and 1990s, when sayings such as “You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else,” became creed.

Of course it makes sense that rises in self-esteem and narcissism are linked, as both relate to self-image and self-worth, but preaching that advocacy for higher self-esteem has necessarily led to the negative effects of narcissism fails to distinguish intrinsic self-esteem from extrinsic self-esteem. The former is truly rooted within the individual: its central questions include: what do you most love about yourself and your accomplishments, and in what ways are you important to the people closest to you and even the larger communities of which you are a part? The latter, by contrast, concentrates on validation from others as the main mechanism for holding up self-worth. Extrinsic self-esteem sounds a lot more like the more undesirable narcissism, while intrinsic self-esteem has invaluable benefits to our society as well as each individual person.

In this vein, some worry that telling a child that ze is special and unique will lead them to feel that they are entitled, and as a result ze will not be able to hold zir ground in a competitive marketplace because narcissism implies overconfidence in one’s ability to succeed. Does this sound familiar? How many times have you heard the argument that a liberal arts education isn’t a good idea, not just because it doesn’t always have a “practical” application, but because it creates this kind of space in which students find praise for creativity and thinking outside the box, as opposed to the “real world” where that praise is absent and no one’s going to coddle us in the same way?

Except that in order to reach any kind of success, of course you need to believe that you will succeed. It’s a very fine line being straddled here. While the opponents of narcissism think that teaching a child how to recognize their strengths and their significance (or, how to tap into their intrinsic self-esteem) will lead them to not be able to fend for themselves properly in a competitive atmosphere, if a person is not taught that they should advocate for themself and their own interests, who is going to advocate for them? It’s a Catch-22; if you don’t want your child to need to be carried through to success, you should not let them know that they are entitled to success because they’re “unique” or “special,” but alternatively, if they’re under the impression that they aren’t special enough to achieve their goals, the only way they could succeed is through the indulgence of others.

Therein lies the fatal flaw of holding the negatives of narcissism up to the positives of self-esteem. You can’t expect someone to be successful if they don’t feel confident in their ideas and their worth to thrive in competition, or even in a relationship (romantic or otherwise) that needs mutual recognition of individual desires and goals. And you don’t get to such a level of self-esteem without enough self-love, which has been wrongly dubbed by the narcissist-phobes as a true danger to success like the rise in self-promotion through social media.

At Wesleyan, both self-love and self-promotion are pretty prevalent, and it can be difficult to make the distinction between the two. But if you’re convinced that the difference is significant, take this as an opportunity to more actively recognize it—in yourself and in others.

Sammi Aibinder is a member of the Class of 2018.