The Tourist has a dull, weary look in his eyes, sighing as he stops in front of a monument. Heavily dropping his backpack during what obviously has been a long day of sightseeing; he’s a picture of exhaustion.

But then a miracle happens: He pulls his camera out to snap a selfie – and his face lights up as if it is Christmas, New Year and his birthday all at once.

It’s a scene taking place at this very moment in countless tourism spots around the world.

If the 17th-century philosopher Rene Descartes were alive today, he might no longer posit “cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) as the argument to prove one’s very existence, but instead “selfio ergo sum.”

What does this abject need by people to take selfies say about our times? Here are three socio-pyschological viewpoints:

1) The cultural pessimist: Selfies are the decline and fall of travel.

Look at me! In a selfie, it is the traveller alone who is in focus. The background is fuzzy and could be anywhere. The cultural pessimist says it’s a sign that people are completely self-absorbed.

“We jump from one tourism attraction to the next. Everything is arbitrary,” says tourism researcher Ulrich Reinhard, a professor who heads the Institute of Future Research in Hamburg.

“Self presentation is pushed to the limit. People shoot 17 selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower just to get the perfect picture.” Time to actually admire and take in the tower itself becomes scant, because it’s off to the next attraction.

There are many cautionary tales about vacationers who see only themselves and nothing else.

In Argentina recently, a throng of people crowded around and photographed themselves in front of a baby dolphin stranded on the beach. Nobody thought to help it back into the water and so, exposed to the sun, the baby dolphin died of dehydration.

Hamburg researcher Reinhardt says selfie shooting means that “a lot gets lost.”

People lose sight of the oddity, the inconspicuous restaurant, the detour that provides a fun surprise, because they are so focussed completely on themselves. “We no longer have the gift of simply taking in the moment.”

2) The digital native: It’s technically possible, so we do it.

This view is somewhat different: The selfie is shot simply because it is so easy to do.

“The selfie is a symptom of a changed style of travelling,” says Andre Wendler, an Internet culture researcher at the University of Weimar. He says there is a reciprocal effect between technology and social behaviour.

“The postcard only existed because there was a postal system. This in turn was closely linked to the invention of the railroad,” Wendler says. Nowadays, you have smartphones and social media – and in turn, selfies that are distributed on a massive basis.

And, if nobody really takes notice of the Eiffel Tower, this is also due to the technology. “A simple view of some distant place is a trivial thing,” Wendler says, since there are untold thousands of pictures in the Internet.

“What is not trivial, however, is that one is personally there at some spot.” Then, one’s friends can be bombarded with selfies made on vacation – simply because it is technically possible.

3) A psychologist says this: We have always craved recognition.

Showing one’s friends that you’re having a great vacation and are completely happy is something people have always wanted to do.

“Psychologically speaking, we have not changed,” says Astrid Carolus, a media psychologist at Wuerzburg University. “In the past, after a holiday people sat down for an evening of viewing slides. Today, people can make a live presentation on the social media.”

So it’s only a matter of difference in the methods used then and now. But the motivation remains the same.

Carolus does concede that peoples’ perspectives about their vacation have changed under the aim of constantly trying to shoot fantastic selfies.

“But it is not absolutely true that people with smartphones take in less than those without. It is not necessarily a worse perspective, but rather a different one,” she says. “And the double value added of one’s experiences and documenting this for others is very important to many people.”

The selfie, in this view, adds value to a person’s holiday trip.