Digital display networks and the birth of the smile in the Media Age

Abstract

Throughout the 20th century, the recording of the facial expression of smiling expanded in purpose and meaning. Conventions of bourgeois respectability, combined with the legacies of pictorial portraiture, constituted traditional regimes of self-representation. The construction of public visibility was reconfigured by the rise of consumer culture and the Ego, as well as by innovations in resources for public self-portraiture – from Kodak© cameras to smartphones and selfies. In this context, we discuss the rise of the "empty self" and its implication in the growing prevalence of depressive phenomena associated with screen time. Uncritical experiences, devoid of transcendence, hinder the constitution of the "Integral Self," full of meaning and collective purposes, just as lapses in significant references and the need for public recognition tend to degenerate into supremacist gregariousness – ascendancy and domination for group cohesion.

Our central objective is to highlight theoretical gaps regarding the ethical nature of the political/commercial exploitation of mass narcissism instrumentalized by digital media. We define the concept of "Media Age" as the current historical period in which the scarcity of ethical guidance and normative regulation, in the face of counter-pressure from big tech companies, generates anomie in various fields. Digital mediation dominates politics and the economy with systematically distorted communication devices; interactions without relationality proliferate in parallel with disbelief in the future, disconnection from the past, and political indifference; damage to mental health and critical thinking – with particular emphasis on the harmful influences on the self-image of adolescents overexposed to mirror-screens. We conclude, therefore, that a consistent ethical/theoretical foundation is prior to and structuring for the construction of normative parameters that guide public policies and an emancipatory "media literacy education."