In July, a 27-year-old hiker named Aanvi Kamdar died while shooting a 300-foot waterfall in India to share on Instagram.
In April, the 39-year-old news producer stepped off a viewing platform in Georgia while climbing a barrier to take a selfie.
In March, he was a 43-year-old tourist in Indonesia; he had just taken his photo at the edge of the cliff. In December, a 39-year-old tourist fell off a cliff in Beacon Hill, New York, while taking a selfie with her husband.
According to a 2022 study published in the Journal of Travel Medicine, there were 379 selfie-related deaths worldwide between 2008 and 2021. That’s more than 4 times the number of people who died from shark bites in the same period. the same. And yet that number may be underestimated, because the numbers are drawn heavily from media reports, which do not mention all the people who die and can be difficult for researchers to find.
Selfie-related murders are not one or two risk-takers, airheads, or vain teenagers. They affect tourists and citizens of all ages and genders worldwide. That’s why, a few years ago, researcher Sam Cornell led the call to take selfies as a public health issue.
“This is a potentially dangerous human behavior, so we need to educate and communicate better,” Cornell tells me. kills in aquatic habitats—University of New South Wales, Australia.
Before the front-facing camera became ubiquitous, which made it to iPhones in 2010, people were still dying from accidental falls in nature. “Humans have always taken risks,” says Cornell. “Social media and smartphones – they accelerate and amplify.”
Not only can smartphones be distracting in dangerous situations. They are also actively growing number of people going to places like cliffs and waterfalls. A study conducted in April confirmed, for the first time, how exposure to social media has directly increased the number of visitors to parks in the US. waste.
Selfie deaths are not uncommon, with a peak of 68 in 2019. But it seems they are here to stay. A 2022 Journal of Travel Medicine study found that falls from heights accounted for nearly 50 percent of selfie-related injuries, followed by transportation-related incidents (28 percent) and drowning ( 13 percent). Tourists—37 percent of victims—were more likely to die from falls than from other causes, and they tended to be older than local victims, who were often were teenagers and young adults who engage in risky behavior. The highest number of deaths occurs in India (statistics that led the country to declare selfie-related killings a national problem back in 2015), followed by the US and Russia.
However, despite the clear methods, the public and the media seem to treat selfie falls not because of safety issues in tourist areas that need to be addressed but as individual mistakes. Cornell looked at media coverage of homicides and found that it rarely included any kind of prevention education. Instead, the writings tended to be critical, recounting what someone did that led to death or highlighting the apathy and ignorance of the tourists (although some of the later sections -rao talk about taking selfies as a public health issue) . The emotional aspects were often unkind, too, Cornell says.
Consider two in the Daily Mail article about Kamdar’s death at the 300-metre waterfall. ,” wrote another reader. Another said: “I think this says something about the intelligence of people who call themselves influencers.”
Land managers in natural tourist areas, however, do they take these incidents seriously, and consider it a problem that they (not the individual) are responsible for dealing with. In another study, Cornell interviewed 18 Australian state managers, including park staff and local councils in Sydney, where beautiful but dangerous cliffs attract crowds. He found that as the number of visitors increased, they were “struggling with this problem,” he says, and looking for new ways to solve it.
A common solution, from a land management point of view, is to put up educational signs and barriers, as is already done in areas that could be dangerous even if you are not attached to your phone. An even more powerful step is to designate the entire area “no selfie area”. Some researchers have called for these areas to be more widely accepted; there is currently no data to support their performance. But it is possible that signs, obstacles and restrictions can do more for people who intend to shoot well, because of the pressure to get Instagram likes or recreate the experience of the tourist who encouraged their visit.
Perhaps this would be a positive step: if the travel influencers themselves warned potential travelers about the possible negative judgments of capturing information in dangerous places. But when Cornell spoke to 19 travel and tourism influencers for an unpublished study, he came up with nothing. “One of the main issues that came up was, like, ‘We’re content creators,'” he recalls. “‘We didn’t come here to teach. We’re going to have fun.’ ” And it doesn’t matter what their motivations are should do, it is difficult to control or force what they say to their captive audience. (Though there is an example: A few years ago, an Australian agency threatened influencers with jail time if they provided false information.)
If smartphones are the problem, they may also be the solution. In Cornell’s dream world, a manufacturer like Apple would warn its users when they reach certain connections that they are in a dangerous area. After all, “you’re already on your phone,” he thinks. Such alerts can even let you know how many people have died in the same area while taking a selfie—a powerful tactic that has been used to discourage the dangerous sport of rock fishing. Australia. Indian researchers developed a version of this idea back in 2018: a device called Saftie (as in, safety together selfie), which appears to be no longer available. Another glaring issue with the app is that it requires a download, so it may not be accessible to high-risk people who aren’t already thinking about selfie-killing.
While researchers are studying the best ways to reach selfie-takers, all strategies are based on education and awareness so people can make the safest decisions. “I think you should take selfies wherever you want. But I also think you should be notified if you’re doing something dangerous,” says Cornell.
The next time you hear about the selfie epidemic, consider your own risk and talk to the people in your life who may be at high risk. After all, those who die are unfortunate among many people, many who take selfies in the same places, and live to share their feelings. pictures.
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