Don’t let a selfie be the end of you

In 2017, we explored the rise of the “kill-fie” — a portmanteau coined for selfies that put folks susceptible to extreme harm and demise — and efforts to quash the pattern.

Our story reported that one nation was a hotbed of dangerous selfies. Knowledge scientists at Cornell College carried out in depth searches of on-line information accounts of demise by selfie. Their report, “Me, Myself and My Killfie”, tallied 127 selfie deaths from 2014 by 2016. Greater than half had been in India.

Now it is not a definitive research. The information media does not report on each dangerous selfie. And India is house to the world’s greatest inhabitants. 

Nonetheless, India took the report fairly severely. Police within the western Indian metropolis of Mumbai recognized 16 accident-prone zones the place a lot of the nation’s selfie-related deaths had been recorded — for instance, close to seashores and forts and alongside the favored Marine Drive which provides scenic views of the Arabian sea. Then they launched a public consciousness marketing campaign on tv and posted warnings on X. Pc scientists on the Indraprastha Institute of Data Know-how, Delhi, (IIIT-D) launched a free app known as Saftie in 2017, warning selfie takers to avoid excessive threat areas.  

Have these warnings had an influence? Or do dangerous selfies stay an issue in India and elsewhere? We requested journalist Kamala Thiagarajan, who did the unique story, to comply with up.

He ran away as quick as he may. It was nearly too late.

In a now-viral video from August 10, an elephant chases and practically tramples a vacationer on the highways of Bandipur Nationwide Park, recognized for its nature walks, birdwatching and wildlife safaris, within the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Authorities say that the person, a vacationer from the neighboring state of Kerala, was fortunate to outlive — and that the elephant was probably provoked as a result of the vacationer had climbed out of his safari automobile and approached the animal to take a selfie.

It wasn’t an remoted incident. That very same month, an elephant charged at two males from Chhattisgarh, a landlocked state in northern India, after they tried to pose with it for a selfie. They managed to run to security.

And in 2025, India stays on the high of the worldwide checklist for harmful selfies, in keeping with two new surveys.

Final week, the Barber Regulation Agency launched findings from its evaluation of google information accounts of selfies that leads to harm or demise, starting in March 2014 by Might 2025.

India’s 271 instances made up 42% of the overall. The U.S. ranked second with 45 instances, adopted by Russia with 19.

A selfie database overlaying 2014 to 2023, from the insurance coverage comparability web site Swiftest. got here to the identical conclusion. It cites 190 deaths in India — practically half of all of the deaths it compiled — and 55 accidents.

The place does hazard lurk and who will get harm?

Whereas tales of animal assaults make headlines, they are not the primary selfie menace.

In accordance with the surveys, the commonest hazard zones are heights — waterfalls, rooftops, bridges and cliffs which are particularly tempting backdrops for dramatic selfies.

And the principle instigators are males. A joint research by Carnegie Mellon College and the Indraprastha Institute of Know-how in New Delhi discovered that roughly three out of 4 selfie-related deaths concerned males posing dangerously.

One surprising discovering, say selfie researchers, is that the victims aren’t simply the particular person taking the selfie.

“One of many unusual insights I discovered was that in locations like India, an individual making an attempt to take a selfie will usually fall right into a river or physique of water, and different folks will then soar within the water to attempt to save the particular person and likewise lose their lives. It was one thing that was very troubling to study — that one particular person’s mistake may result in a wider tragedy,” says Matthew H. Nash, lead researcher at Swiftest.

What is the motive? 

Typically persons are on the lookout for web fame. And possibly fortune. 

Psychologists say the shift to “killfies” occurs when the pursuit of on-line validation overrides judgment. “When folks obtain constructive suggestions on their selfies, that creates the need to take extra of them. Use quickly turns into abuse,” says Selvikumari Ramasubramanian, a scientific psychologist at MS Chellamuthu Belief and Analysis Basis, a non-profit providing psychological well being companies in Madurai.

Within the Swiftest’s 2023 survey of 1,233 Instagram customers, one in 10 admitted they’d threat their security for extra followers.

A few of these high-risk selfie takers find yourself promoting pictures to numerous social media platforms.

And hashtags like #dangerousselfie and #extremeselfie encourage copycat habits.

An rising hazard

In India, authorities at the moment are frightened about one other potential hazard spot: large gatherings.

Solomon Nesakumar, further commissioner of police in Kolkata, instructed NPR that crowd management is all the time troublesome and turns into much more difficult when folks cease to take selfies or their shut cousin, video reels to put up on Instagram and different platforms.

“We have to preserve the group shifting to keep away from accidents, however selfie takers do not perceive this. They put themselves and others susceptible to being trampled — or worse, triggering a stampede,” he says.

At gatherings just like the Mahakumbh within the northern Indian metropolis of Pragyaraj this January, the place tens of millions of Hindu pilgrims attend what’s thought of the world’s largest non secular competition, selfies had been banned. 

To forestall a possible tragedy at such an enormous occasion, he says, “police make frequent bulletins to tell folks of the ban and even quickly confiscate telephones from offenders.”

The worry of shedding a cellphone, even for a brief time period, would possibly become an efficient deterrent for dangerous selfies.

Kamala Thiagarajan is a contract journalist based mostly in Madurai, Southern India. She reviews on world well being, science and improvement and has been printed in The New York Instances, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and different shops. You’ll find her on X @kamal_t