The term selfie, sometimes though less commonly spelt selfy, first emerged in 2004 as a catchy Internet abbreviation of the word self-portrait. It was initially used as a hashtag on photo-sharing sites to indicate that the subject of a photo was the person who had uploaded it, but gradually began to take on a life of its own as a general reference to a self-taken digital photo.

The term selfie, sometimes though less commonly spelt selfy, first emerged in 2004 as a catchy Internet abbreviation of the word self-portrait. It was initially used as a hashtag on photo-sharing sites to indicate that the subject of a photo was the person who had uploaded it, but gradually began to take on a life of its own as a general reference to a self-taken digital photo.