Why Young Women Take and Share Selfies: An Exploratory Qualitative Study of Self-Presentation and Social Media Behavior in Pakistan

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Selfies have become an embedded form of digital self-presentation, yet the motivations that connect selfie creation, editing and sharing remain multifaceted. This exploratory qualitative study examines why young consumers take selfies, how they decide what to share, and what social and psychological meanings they attach to these practices. The study draws on four complementary sources of evidence: a review of ten relevant studies, observation of selfie-related behavior in social-media and physical settings, one focus-group discussion with six women aged 20-30, and one in-depth interview with a 25-year-old woman. The primary qualitative material was organized and coded in NVivo using word-frequency, coding and concept-mapping techniques. The analysis identified six interconnected themes: self-presentation and the ideal self; social acknowledgement and attention; communication and belonging; memory and archiving; editing, beauty and creativity; and travel-related identity signaling. The findings suggest that selfie behavior cannot be reduced to a single motive such as narcissism. Instead, taking and sharing selfies operates simultaneously as identity work, social communication, impression management and personal archiving. For marketers and digital-platform managers, the study highlights the importance of visual self-expression, social feedback and memory functions in shaping consumer engagement. Because the sample is small and homogeneous, the results are exploratory rather than generalizable and provide a basis for larger comparative studies.