The selfie can seem to be innocuous. It’s just a picture of you and whatever background that you want. For many of these lead to likes and shares on social media and it has lead people to try to get the perfect selfie or to take them in increasingly more dangerous situations. People have died trying to do this and in a more recent event national pride has been hurt by such an endeavor.
Selfies Can Kill You
You have probably seen the articles published about how over 250 people have been killed between 2011 and 2017 taking selfies. Most were men under the age of 30 and they predominantly happened in India, Russia, the US and Pakistan.
People have been washed away by high water or have fallen out of boats. Some have fallen off of cliffs. Others have taken a selfie with an approaching train, trying to get that perfect pic as the train pulls up. Some people have tried to get that perfect picture with a wild animal. Here in the US, most selfie deaths occurred with people posing with guns and accidentally shooting themselves. It is more of a hazard than Pokemon Go was.
These numbers are probably low as well. Chances are many others have been killed taking a selfie, especially in a car while driving since those incidents would just be recorded as an auto wreck.
Why Is This Happening?
The simple answer is that young people want to be cool and taking the perfect selfie is cool. The higher the risk, the higher the cool factor. This has led to a call to create a no selfie zone in toursity areas since this is where most of these occur, especially in India, which accounts for over half of the number of selfie deaths. There is a reason that barriers are put up!
Are those extra few social media likes worth your life? For hundreds of people that is something they should have asked themselves before they put themselves in danger. For probably thousands more who have not died, they need to ask themselves how much they want to tempt death?
Selfie Takers Stomping On National Pride
Of course the selfie affects more than just people. Selfie-obsessed people have been searching for the perfect selfie in tulip fields in the Netherlands and are not only trespassing into the fields in sometimes large numbers but are trampling the flower, one of the symbols of Dutch pride, which have been cultivated in the Netherlands since 1592 and at one point were even more valuable than gold.
Dutch officials blame Instagram for the craze and have launched a campaign telling people where it is OK to get that selfie and which fields allow visitors to walk into them. They are trying to prevent selfie takers from stomping on Dutch pride. Will it work?