During the iPhone 17 launch event, Apple revealed that its customers took 500 billion selfies last year, a massive figure that shows just how normalized the practice has become.

Selfies were often mocked when they were deemed the purview of Instagram-obsessed teenage girls, but these days it’s not unusual to see everyone from seniors to a gaggle of sports bros gathering around a single phone like an object of worship.

Yes, now everyone is Instagram-obsessed, not just teenage girls. The ageism and misogyny was wrong. The negative assessment of people being vain was not.