Selfies can sometimes be dangerous!

One of my sons has recently become fond of taking selfies. He likes to laugh, and to cause his friends to laugh. So my eyebrows were raised by this article in the Precog blog.

one particularly disturbing trend that has emerged lately is that of clicking dangerous selfies; proving to be so disastrous that during the year 2015 alone, there have been more deaths caused due to selfies than shark attacks all over the world. ...A selfie-related death can be defined as a death of an individual or group of people that could have been avoided had the individual(s) not been taking a selfie.

Russian authorities came up with a public awareness campaign to enlighten citizens of the hazardous implications of taking selfies [2]. Similarly, Mumbai police recently classified 16 zones across the city as No-Selfie zones, after a rise in the number of selfie casualties [3].

The reasons for these selfie casualties were found to broadly belong to the following categories (Figure 2):

Height Related – Selfie casualties caused due to people falling from an elevated location. [8]

Water Related – Selfie casualties caused due to drowning. [9]

Height and Water Related - Selfie casualties involving falling from elevated locations into a water body. [10]

Vehicle/Road Related– Selfie casualties caused due to vehicle accidents. [11]

Train Related– Selfie casualties caused due to being hit by a train.[12]

Weapons Related– Selfie casualties caused due to accidental firing of a weapon.[13]

Animal Related– Selfie casualties caused due to attack by an animal while taking the selfie with or near the animal.[14]

Electricity Related- Selfie casualties caused due to electrocution from live wires.[15]

Read more here.