ARE SELFIES SAFE- DON'T BECOME A STATISTIC!

Millennials account for almost all of the selfie deaths in India, according to an Economic Times report. This is likely because young people are dealing with an identity that shifts between the boundaries of their offline and online worlds. Doctors in Ireland who investigated this phenomenon found that low spatial awareness and a focus on getting daring photos have been linked to some deaths in that geography. 

A selfie address three vital elements – self-representation, visual portraiture and sharing who they are. But while selfies freeze time, its shelf life is limited. Once posted, a selfie decays with time, even as it generates reactions, likes, and comments – until the next selfie is taken and uploaded.

“I take 15 different selfies to upload one on social media,” said a college student in a study on ‘selfies’, or the obsessive taking of selfies.

Another study done on Mumbai’s teens shows that narcissism, selfie posting, and photo-editing had a strong relationship with higher body image dissatisfaction amongst female selfie-takers. For these young people, a selfie may genuinely capture a moment that they need to share but for many others, it morphs into an addiction that results in risky behaviors for themselves and others.

Why are selfies taken?

Selfies are seen to reiterate self-identity and have a self-reinforcement effect – narcissism leads to more selfies being taken which enhances their narcissism levels. The taking of selfies and the sharing on social media has been explored by psychologists, the world over. The HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness (versus Anger), Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience) and the Big 5 personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) have been used by researchers to identify personality traits that lead to selfie behaviors.

And it seems there are some differences observed between why girls and boys take selfies. Girls seek to establish leadership and authority with selfies, while for boys they are about entitlement and exploitation.

Researchers who conducted the study to understand the obsessive taking of selfies in India designed the Selfie behavioral scale that demonstrates the six factors that explain three severity levels of borderline, acute, and chronic selfies.

This study amongst college students identified that self-confidence and mood modification factors explain the borderline condition, subjective conformity explains the acute condition, and attention-seeking, environmental enhancement, and social competition explains the chronic condition.

How has machine learning helped?

A detailed analysis of Twitter data across an 18-month period saw researchers curating 91,059 tweets that further classified selfies as dangerous and non-dangerous. This team that came up with the term ‘killfile’, looked at Twitter data from India to identify factors that could predict the risk of taking a selfie (Me, myself, and my killfile).  Tweets were classified based on their geo-location, text, and image. Dangerous selfie images were annotated for the different types of risks or features: water, height, vehicle, road, animal, weapon, and train. The three features that best predicted risk were water, height, and vehicle/train. Individually, ‘image’ alone was able to predict the danger of taking a selfie better than either location and text: it has an accuracy of 73%. When a tweet combined image, text and geo-location, it provided the highest accuracy in predicting risk.

Locally, @selfietodiefor has been sending out tweets to spread awareness on selfie deaths. The Mumbai police use its resources to verbally warn selfie-takers in high-risk prone areas. The #selfiekills hashtag has been launched to warns about selfie deaths. An application that will warn selfie-takers of a particularly risky no-go area is being developed. Indonesia and Russia have taken preventative measures to increase awareness of selfie free zones and selfie risks. 2,000 spots around the world have been identified as being risk prone. There is a lot being done with potential for more.

What else can be done?

Selfie deaths have become a recurring tragedy. The travel industry and thousands of travel blogs, vlogs and personal bloggers that encourage experiences to be posted so that it may capture a mood, a moment, an experience, could also encourage safer selfie-taking methods. Can the killfie statistic be smartly used as a travel health warning to the many tourists who travel and capture unique and personal experiences?

‘Is it selfie worthy? reminder printed into the many colorful brochures of local tourist spots. Or the use of death statistics to be a harsh reminder of selfie dangers in high-risk zones. Or social norming which addresses perceived misperceptions of the social norm to influence safer behaviors? The type of nudge or behavioral intervention that is likely to work is very much dependent on the context and the specific behavior. The problem of selfie deaths requires that these methods are explored fully. 

With selfie deaths caused by a mobile phone, the phone itself could become a tool to prevent these unnecessary deaths.  Can selfie versions of mobile cameras offer a choice to selfie-takers about safety before a selfie is taken at a risk-prone place? Are you sure it is safe to take a selfie? Nudge when the selfie mode is switched on? IIIT Delhi and IIT Roppar researchers have seperately worked in selfie death prevention apps Saftie and Garuda respectively. Both apps use machine learning to identify the location of the selfie taker and warn of dangers. Google and Apple maps integrating dangerous killfie points of pre-identified locations where selfie deaths have occured. 

It needs to remind people (young and old alike) that becoming a killfie statistic is a rather sad outcome to a potentially inspiring life.

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References:

 

Aravind,I 2018, ‘Selfies can be deadly - and India leads the way’, The Economic Times, 18 February, accessed 21 September 2021, <https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/lifestyle/selfies-can-be-deadly-and-india-leads-the-way/articleshow/62964327.cms>

Coffey, H 2017,’India has the highest number of Selfie deaths in the world’, Independant ,06 July, accessed 21 September 2021, <https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/india-selfie-deaths-highest-number-priti-pise-marine-drive-instagram-a7827486.html>

PTI, 2018,’Mobile internet users in India seen at 478 million by June: IAMAI’, The Times of India,29 May, accessed in 21 September 2021,<https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/mobile-internet-users-in-india-seen-at-478-million-by-june-iamai/articleshow/63533860.cms>

Keelerey, S 2021,’Mobile internet user penetration India 2010-2040’, Statista, 24 August, accessed 21 September 2021, <https://www.statista.com/statistics/309019/india-mobile-phone-internet-user-penetration/>

Balakrishnan, J., Griffiths, M.D. An Exploratory Study of “Selfitis” and the Development of the Selfitis Behavior Scale. Int J Ment Health Addiction 16, 722–736 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-017-9844-x

 

Dutta, E., Sharma, P., Dikshit, R., Shah, N., Sonavane, S., Bharati, A., & Sousa, A. D. (2016). Attitudes toward selfie taking in school-going adolescents: an exploratory study. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 38(3), 242-245.

 

Qiu, L., Lu, J., Yang, S., Qu, W., & Zhu, T. (2015). What does your selfie say about you?. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 443-449.