India begs youths to ‘selfie responsibly’ amid efforts to combat killer trend
- From PM Modi to Bollywood stars, the love for selfies is strong in India, where research shows almost 50 per cent of the world’s selfie deaths occur
- Activists and officials are trying to combat the trend with apps logging ‘killfie’ areas, no-selfie zones at beaches, and anti-selfie reminders at train tracks
Police officials say the number of selfie fatalities could be much higher, possibly in the thousands, as many cases go unreported and “death by selfie” is not recognised as an official cause of death.
Around the world, the simple act of snapping photos of oneself has become such a life-threatening activity, some refer to it as a “killfie”. The scourge of deaths by selfies is particularly concentrated in India, which has in recent years become dubbed the “selfie death capital of the world”.
Earlier this month, two teenagers drowned in a pond while taking a selfie in the northern city of Agra. In another incident, a young person’s video capturing his dangerous stunts on a local train in Mumbai went viral last month, triggering national outrage.
In the eastern state of Orissa, a 27-year-old woman drowned in a river after she slipped and fell while snapping photos of herself at the Kaanakund picnic spot area.
Elsewhere in Orissa, a 13-year-old student was charred to death after getting entangled in a high-voltage electric wire while snapping photos of himself atop a moving train.
In 2018, researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences found that about half of the world’s 259 reported selfie deaths between 2011 and 2017 occurred in India.
