Selfie: How the West Became Self-Obsessed

by Will Storr

their self-esteem, their sense of control over their environment and what we call their “meaningful existence”, which is whether someone feels acknowledged or invisible. It also affected their anger and their sadness.’ Kip observed some of these experiments through a one-way mirror. ‘They were so powerful I had trouble watching.’ All this undermines the folk truth that ‘names can never hurt me’. They can and they do. ‘People say social pain “is all in your head” and, indeed, it is,’ said Kip, ‘because that’s where you register both physical and social pain.’ (Some researchers, in fact, believe they actually use the same brain networks but, at the time of writing, a dispute has broken out in academia as to the extent of the overlap.) And social pain can be no less painful. ‘Sometimes we’d prefer to experience physical pain than the breakdown of a relationship,’ Dr Giorgia Silani of Italy’s International School for Advanced Studies told me.