Selfie fever is not fun anymore! Deaths and injuries are on the rise due to selfies
A strange phenomenon called the “selfie” has seen its upsurge in the last few years after the launch of smartphones equipped with front cameras. Powerful cameras and vast reach of social media along with expansion of mobile technology have contributed to making “selfies”a craze.
For those who are unfamiliar with what a selfie is, here’s a brief definition: A selfie is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or camera phone held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies are often shared on social networking services such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The American Psychiatric Association has classified the taking of selfies as a mild mental disorder. As people become more daring in their desire to break new ground in the course of taking selfies, they can be dangerous for your health and actually “kill” you. By placing themselves in increasingly dangerous situations to enhance the dramatic effect of their photographs, some selfie-takers are getting killed and twice as many have been severely injured.
According to Telegraph more people have died while taking selfies in 2015 rather than by shark attacks and the death toll keeps rising. As of 2016, India had recorded more selfie-related deaths than any other country.
We bring some of the most horrifying deaths and injuries that occurred to people in immediate connection with taking of a selfie in the year 2015 and 2016.
2015
• The Taj Mahal is one of the greatest monuments in the world and in September it was all over the news. A Japanese tourist lost his life there while taking a selfie. According to an eyewitness, the victim was on the steps when he slipped and fell. Police reportedly said he lost consciousness immediately after the fall and died of head injuries at the hospital.
• An Indian engineering student died while taking selfies with friends at Kolli Hills, Namakkal, Tamil Nadu, India. The rock on which he was standing cracked and gave way, plunging him 60 feet and causing his death from head injuries.
• A 17-year-old Russian student fell to his death attempting to take a selfie while hanging from a nine-story building. The teenager climbed to the top of the building in Vologda, Russia, to take a selfie for his collection of photos in dangerous places. Unfortunately, this time his luck ran out.
• A 19-year-old from Houston died after trying to take an Instagram selfie while holding a loaded gun to his head. He accidentally fired the gun and shot himself in the throat. He died at the scene.
• An 18-year-old Romanian teenager died in May while trying to take “the ultimate selfie”. Posing with a friend on top of a train in the northeastern Romanian city of Ia?i, her leg touched a live wire above, sending an electrical surge of up to 27,000 volts through her body. She died instantly and her 17-year-old friend was hospitalized but survived.
2016
• A 19-year-old student while taking a selfie fell from the top of a 20-story apartment building in Manila, Philippines. According to her classmate, “she was not satisfied with the photos they had taken so she decided to climb up the parapet wall”.
• A 20-year-old Indian boy fell to death while taking a selfie from Reasi Fort at Jammu and Kashmir, India.
• A 20-year-old college girl drowned at Bandra Bandstand in Mumbai, India believed to have been swept away in the high tide. According to friends of the girls, they were talking selfies, standing on the rock, close to the Bandra Worli Sea Link (BWSL). “The girls were standing 50 metres away from the shore when the water suddenly rose. They did not notice water rising and remained on the rock taking pictures (selfies). One of the girls was pulled into the water due to high tide.”
• A 16-year-old boy was killed by a passenger train while taking a selfie with the approaching train in Chennai, India. “The teen reportedly walked in front of the train and waited for it to come closer before taking the photo.”
• Five Indian tourists fell off the cliff while taking a selfie at Anjuna village in Panaji, Goa leaving all of them injured. Of the five tourists, two of them were seriously injured.
Resource :Wiki
