Selfies kill five times more people than sharks

This article is more than 12 months old

Jun 28, 2019 06:00 am

RIO DE JANEIRO : Selfies have killed five times more people than shark attacks. Between October 2011 and November 2017, at least 259 people died taking selfies around the world, according to India's Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, compared with just 50 people killed by sharks in the same period.

While women take the most selfies, young men, who are more prone to take risks, make up three quarters of the selfie deaths - in drownings, crashes, falls or shooting accidents.

India, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, holds the record for the number of people dying in the act of photographing themselves, with 159 recorded so far. It has seen groups of young people die when they were hit by a train or drowning when their boat sank at the moment they were clicking the shutter.

The situation has become so dire that India has set up "no selfie" zones - 16 of them in the city of Mumbai alone.

The country came in far ahead of Russia (16 deaths) and the US (14). Russian police issued a guide to "selfies without danger" in 2015. In the US, most of those involved in selfie deaths fatally shot themselves while seeking the perfect pose. A number of people have fallen to their deaths at the Grand Canyon.

In January, Taiwanese social media celebrity Gigi Wu, 36, known as the Bikini Climber for taking selfies on top of mountains dressed in a bikini, died when she fell into a ravine. - AFP