When I won Miss World in 1993 I entered a world in which image was not treated as entertainment. It was treated as power, as property, and as responsibility.

The public remembers the presentation with glamour, gowns, hair, make-up, and the choreography of appearances which were deliberate. What most people never saw was the structure beneath it to make it all seamless; the discipline governing how an image was captured, controlled, and released.

That education began even before that crown. After winning Miss Jamaica World in September 1993 I was no longer simply present in a room; I was being documented inside it. Cameras were constant, photo shoots were frequent; campaigns, television appearances were at an unimaginable.

However, on every set, every production, every campaign roll-out there was a discreet but critical feature — someone with a clipboard; not a stylist, not a publicist, someone responsible for permission. Someone responsible for the release — a talent release.

It sounds simple because it was. But it seriously mattered, because of if your likeness were captured, whether you were the star, in the background, or passing through the frame, you had to sign an agreement allowing your image to be used. If you did not sign, the production adjusted: They blurred you, they reshot, they moved the camera, or sometimes they removed you from the frame entirely.

That was not bureaucratic bad mind; it was respect and protection. It also recognised a fundamental truth modern selfie culture has quietly discarded: Just because a camera can capture you does not mean someone has the right to publish you without your consent.

I believe this is the conversation we urgently need to have; not because selfies are evil or people should stop celebrating themselves — because actually a selfie can be fun, empowering, even joyful. The danger lies in the culture around it; the way it has normalised entitlement, casual exposure, and consent-free publishing.

Moreover, in the wrong moment, it can cost you reputational damage, money, relationships, career, particularly in a world increasingly driven by surveillance, data, and security protocols — it can even cost you your freedom.

This is not a small phenomenon. It is global, constant, accelerating. Current estimates suggest approximately 92 to 93 million selfies are taken every day worldwide. That number matters as it reveals how effortlessly images are now captured and can be circulated. Of course, not every selfie is posted, still enough are published to establish one undeniable reality: Cameras have become as common as conversations, and publishing as instinctive as breathing.

Now, the moment you post you are no longer “taking a photo”, you are distributing content, you are publishing. In professional environments publishing is treated as a legal act. In this selfie era, on the other hand, it’s treated like reflex and the world around you like set design.

I encounter this regularly. Recently, I was seated on a flight when the woman in front of me raised her phone and began snapping herself angling her phone with lighting and posing on repeat. She seemed harmless and likely meant no harm. Still, her camera captured me.

I leaned forward and said calmly, “Excuse me, I’m in your video. I don’t want to be. Please delete it.”

Her reaction to me was not anger, it was confusion, mild offence even. That moment revealed how deeply society has absorbed the idea that whoever holds the phone owns the frame. They do not. Furthermore, a phone does not give you dominion over other people.

When challenged, people often reach for the easiest defence: “It’s a public place.” Yes, and no.

In many jurisdictions you may take a photo in public. That does not translate into an unrestricted right to publish another person’s face without consent, particularly when the post exposes them to ridicule, risk, false narrative, or harm.

The difference between capturing and publishing is where adult consequences begin. This is why releases exist in professional environments, because they recognise that a person’s image carries risk, value, privacy, and rights.

Sadly, social media has removed the ‘clipboard’, but kept the camera, and has created millions of publishers with no training and little understanding of the often reckless consequences, where invariably the harm is rarely in the photograph alone. The real damage often begins with the caption or the narrative attached to someone else’s image.

In other words, when a person is identifiable in your post, and your words imply a separate value system to theirs or some wrongdoing, impropriety, shame, or ridicule, you have entered serious territory. Even if you if you delete it later, sometimes it is not intention that defines harm; it is the result.

This is why we also need to be honest about what selfie culture has done: It has reduced strangers into unpaid extras for others’ curated experience. Today, filming in restaurants while other faces remain clearly visible is normalised. We have normalised gym selfies in mirrors with bodies and faces behind them. We have normalised airport, street, beach, and party content, all of it featuring bystanders who never agreed to be part of anyone’s narrative.

The logic is chilling in its simplicity: “I’m not posting them; I’m posting me.” Yet the moment you post you publish everyone in that frame.

It has become fashionable to say, “If you go outside, expect to be recorded.” That logic is lazy, as there are also people who cannot afford to be caught in your selfie at all, not because they are criminals, but because their lives are layered: A woman fleeing domestic abuse whose location your post reveals. A child whose parents protect their digital footprint. A professional whose work requires discretion. A person in grief or illness turned into someone else’s entertainment. Add immigration and the stakes rise

Immigration protocols and border security are no longer what they once were. Many countries now rely on biometric systems, facial comparison tools, and layered risk analysis. In plain language, your face is no longer simply your face; it is data.

The US Customs and Border Protection biometric programme confirms the use of facial comparison technology in travel environments and reports that in FY2023 it processed over 172 million travellers biometrically using this technology. It also confirms that facial comparison is used to process travellers entering the US at 238 airports.

In that world, a photograph is no longer merely memory; it is proof of presence. It can place you somewhere, at a time, near someone, whether you know them or not.

This does not mean every traveller is being hunted. It means the world has evolved and the consequences of being captured in the wrong place at the wrong time are not what they were 20 years ago.

This is not fear-mongering. It is a sober reflection of a digitised world in which image and identity increasingly converge. What used to be “just a picture” can now become proof of location, association, or presence.

Which brings us back to discipline… not paranoia.

Discipline means you respect the power in your hands. It means you see the human being behind the content. It means you stop treating a phone camera like a harmless toy.

So here is the standard, not dramatic, not preachy. Simply mature.

If someone is identifiable in your selfie, ask permission. If permission is not given, delete it. If you are filming in public and strangers are visible, blur faces.

Never post children without clear parental consent.

Never use strangers as entertainment, mockery, or commentary.

If you do not know someone’s story, do not publish their face. The world is too digitised and too security-conscious for careless publishing to remain consequence-free.

A selfie is not evil; it is simply powerful. Everything powerful demands discipline.

You may be holding your phone, framing your perfect angle, capturing your favourite version of yourself, but before you snap, pause, and look again at who else is in that frame. The stranger behind you is not an aesthetic, not set design, not your backdrop. This is a person, with rights, vulnerability, and a life you know nothing about.

Selfie culture has trained us to take first, post faster, ask questions later. The modern world is not structured to absorb that kind of carelessness anymore.

One day too many people will learn the hard way that sometimes it becomes a legal problem. Sometimes it becomes reputational damage. Sometimes it becomes an immigration complication. Sometimes, yes, it could cost you your freedom.

Lisa Hanna is a former Member of Parliament, People’s National Party spokesperson on foreign affairs and foreign trade, and Cabinet member.