With the rise of social media platforms, it has never been easier to advertise yourself. Many of us carefully curate our virtual presence and labor over the perfect tweet, photo comment or vacation panorama in the hopes of getting positive feedback from likes, retweets and shares. This has also brought about the rise of a very specific image: the selfie.
Celebrities have embraced this trend and anyone who follows pop culture icons like Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber or Rihanna are sure to see many selfies. Ellen Degeneres crashed twitter and created the most re-tweeted image of all time with her 2014 Oscar selfie. This image was almost more popular than the Oscar ceremony itself, receiving more than 2 million retweets and inspiring fans to take their own group selfies.
Studies have also shown that social behaviors can be contagious. While this can be bad in the case of unhealthy behaviors like smoking, healthy behaviors have been shown to be contagious too.
The Vitality Institute hereby challenges you to use the power of the selfie to inspire healthy behaviors in yourself and your social network, by taking a photo of yourself doing something healthy and sharing it with the hashtag #HealthySelfie.
Enjoying an apple in the park? Thats the perfect time for a #HealthySelfie. Take one while rock climbing, walking your dog, making a smoothie, or while basking in post-yoga bliss. Capture your moment and upload it to Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest with #HealthySelfie. Then sit back and wait for your likes!
You can also tag your entries on Instagram or Twitter with @VitalityInst (but using #HealthySelfie is what defines participation in the contest). Share as many photos as you want. On a quarterly basis we will randomly select a #HealthySelfie from all submissions as the winner of a prize. That #HealthySelfie will be promoted on our web channels.
A special thanks goes to Daryl Berke, Rebecca Distler, Charlotte LaGuardia, Sara Providence, and Jonathan Staloff for ideating the #HealthySelfie campaign through the 2013 Public Health Intern Innovation Challenge.
