Selfie etiquette?

I know some people love to rant about the infamous "selfie" that has clogged our social media feeds and reduced us all to shameless narcissism, but I kind of like them. Well, sometimes. I think there is nothing funnier than a well-placed, well-timed selfie. But there are also certain times and places where a base level of etiquette should deter anyone from taking them. Take last week, when a high school senior took a selfie with a corpse at a cadaver lab during a class field trip. Her school quickly discovered the selfie on Instagram and threatened to suspend her, but shouldn't it kind of go without saying not to snap photos of your face next to a dead corpse?

This may be an extreme example, but questionably-timed selfies have long been around. There was an entire tumblr for "funeral selfies" (exactly what it sounds like) until it stopped posting in December. The most recent post, on Dec. 10, 2013, reads "Obama has taken a funeral selfie, so our work here is done." The post refers to Obama's controversial selfie with the Danish PM taken at Nelson Mandela's memorial service. Not nearly as egregious as the high school student's, but it still got people talking about selfie etiquette and where to draw the line.

I think the bigger issue surrounding the selfie is the ubiquity of technology that permits us to take them at any time and place, even if it's totally inappropriate. I went to a funeral a few weeks ago, and two different phones went off during the short, 45-minute service. Cell phones beep and buzz during class almost daily. We all carry our phones with us constantly, and with that constant connectivity comes a responsibility to draw our own lines for when the use of technology is inappropriate. And the fact is, each of us has own idea of where that line should be drawn. My family bans texting at the dinner table, but some families go out to dinner only to play on their phones and sit in silence. People will continue to debate over when the pervasiveness of technology goes too far, but for now I think we can all at least agree that "cadaver selfies" should not be a thing.