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What a vain bunch we really are! 24 billion selfies were uploaded to Google last year

Google users uploaded 13.7 petabytes worth of pictures to its Photos app
Analysis of labels added to these showed 24 billion of them were selfies
A recent study found selfie takers rate their pictures higher than others

Published: 06:57 EST, 1 June 2016 | Updated: 11:59 EST, 1 June 2016

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The world, it seems, is much vainer than we could possibly have imagined - there were more than 24 billion selfies were posted on Google's servers last year.

The search giant, which uses machine learning software to add labels to images uploaded to its Google Photos application, analysed how many of those were self portraits.

It said more than 200 million people upload images to the application each month who are responsible for an extraordinary 24 billion selfies.

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A staggering 24 billion selfies (Kim Kardashian - the self-styled Queen of Selfies - pictured taking a selfie with Hilary Clinton) were uploaded to Google's Photos application in the past year. In total the company saw 13.7 petabytes of photographs uploaded to its servers

SELFIE TAKERS LOVE THEMSELVES

It might not come as a huge surprise to many, but prolific selfie takers rate pictures of themselves far higher than they do of those taken by other people.

The study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, asked 200 students to take photos of themselves they would happily post online.

The researchers then asked the students to rate photos of themselves on a scale of 1-7 for attractiveness.

Another group of students were also asked to rate the photos for attractiveness and likability.

Both groups were asked questions about their own selfie-taking habits.

The study found that people who took the most selfies tended to rate themselves as about 4.5 out of seven for attractiveness and five out of seven for likeability.

Non-selfie takers rated their own images as being 3.5 for attractiveness and four for likeability.

By comparison other people tended to rate the images of frequent selfie takers at around three for attractiveness and four for likability.

Dr Daniel Re, a researcher at the University of Toronto who led the study, said: 'They seem to be aware that people don't like seeing a bunch of selfies of others, but when you ask people who hate selfies to rate their own selfies they rate them really high—almost as if they'd forgotten what they just said.'

Yet this is only likely to be a fraction of the true number of self-portraits snapped by smartphone users in the past 12 months – Google only counted images uploaded to its Photos app.

It will not include selfies kept on Apple's iCloud, posted to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram.

According to some estimates in 2014, there were more than 17 million selfies uploaded to social media each week, but Google's figures suggest the cult of selfie taking has grown even further.

However, as Google's Photos application allowed users to upload all the images on their devices – a total of 13.7 petabytes in the past year – some of the selfies they tagged could be older.

A blog post by Google said: 'A year ago, we introduced Google Photos with one mission – to be a home for all your photos and videos organised and brought to life, so that you can share and save what matters.

'You've collectively freed up 13.7 petabytes of storage on your devices – it would take 424 years to swipe through that many photos.

'We've also applied two trillion labels, and 24 billion of those have been for selfies.'

The statistics emerged in the wake of a recent study, which found frequent selfie takers rate pictures of themselves far higher than other people do.

It even found that while even those selfie takers who claimed they found other people's pictures narcissitic, still rated their own images higher than anyone else did.

The findings provide an alarming glimpse at the trend of self-obsession that is driving the selfie culture.

For those frustrated by the hoards of tourists and teenagers wandering down busy streets trying to capture the perfect selfie, it will probably be little surprise.

But the study by psychologists at the University of Toronto shows that people who take a lot of selfies are obsessed with how they look to the point they are blind to how they appear to others.

It is estimated around 17 million selfies (model posing for a portrait with a selfie stick) are uploaded to social media each week - totally around 884 million a year - but Google reports that in the past year it has seen 24 billion selfies uploaded to its Photos application

The selfie craze has been largely driven by celebrities but it has also seen politicians getting in on the act in an attempt to boost their popularity (picture of David Cameron posing for a selfie)

'People take so many of these, they trick themselves into thinking they are doing a good job at it,' said Dr Daniel Re, a researcher at the University of Toronto who led the study.

'Ironically, by doing so, they may be making themselves look more narcissistic and less attractive.

'Some people reported taking as many as 20, 50 and even 100 selfies in a week.'

Even Syrian refugees have been captured taking 'selfies' (pictured) when they have arrived on the shores of Europe after making the treacherous crossing over the Mediterranean and the Aegean Seas