New Delhi: The rise of selfie photography in some of the world’s most beautiful, and dangerous, places is sparking a range of interventions aimed at combating risk-taking that has resulted in a string of gruesome deaths worldwide.
With the increase in deaths, now experts at universities in the United States and India have launched an app that could disable phone cameras in the most dangerous spots.Researchers have developed an app that deters people from clicking "dangerous selfies" called Saftie.
The act of taking a picture of oneself with a mobile phone, placing the subject center-stage, has exploded in popularity in recent years, with everyone from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to Celebrities worldwide.
But the selfie has also inspired a spate of risk taking and offensive public behavior, pushing the boundaries of safety and decorum, whether by dangling from a skyscraper or posing with live explosives.
Posing with a new gun, from the top of a tall building or on a seaside cliff are just some of the ways more than 127 people died taking selfies between 2014 and 2016.Of the 127 deaths, 76 came from India - the highest globally, followed by nine in Pakistan, eight in the US and six in Russia.
The most likely cause of death was falling from a great height, with people going to extreme lengths to take a selfie on cliffs or the top of buildings to impress followers on social media.
In India, there are more selfie deaths related to trains, which is believed is due to the belief that posing on or next to train tracks with their best friend is regarded as romantic and a sign of never-ending friendship.
To cater to this serious issue, Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology in Delhi, Last year found out the number of selfie-related deaths last year. The team along with other researchers based in different universities carried out a study analysing the incidence of selfie deaths. His team combed through English language news reports on selfie deaths between March 2014 and September 2016.
After knowing the shocking result of the study they are now ready with the solution to the hazardous problem of selfies.
Under the leadership of Ponnurangam Kumaraguru the "killer selfie" team has now developed an app that deters people from clicking "dangerous selfies." Called Saftie, the free app developed at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (IIIT-D) went up on the Google Play Store earlier this year. The app works by detecting accident-prone areas through the phone's location or detecting potential sources of accidents in the picture, like a water body or an elevated surface. It then alerts the user with a message advising them against clicking a picture.
Kumaraguru along with anthropologist Shriram Venkatraman of IIIT-D is currently working on a paper that studies the phenomenon of thrill-seeking selfies, while looking for a tech solution.
Venkatraman has been spending hours interviewing people on their selfie habits, and people-watching at malls and markets to observe selfie-taking behaviours. He met a 14-year-old boy in Delhi who had clicked a selfie while dangling single-handedly from his second-floor balcony, and then posted it to Instagram. "His friends thought it was cool. His parents were not on Instagram, which is why it was his preferred medium of sharing.
Researchers chose Twitter as an important medium to find the real amount of selfies taken by people around the world. It was because of its Streaming API interfacing, meaning data and tweets could be extracted in real time. To compile the list of 127, they searched hashtags including #dangerousselfie, #extremeselfie,#drivingselfie and #letmetakeaselfie.
From those nearly 138,000 results, they found 91,059 had images and 62,000 of those were actual selfies. From there, they eliminated images without Geo Location enabled, leaving about 6,842.
To determine if the selfies were dangerous or not, researchers set criteria for the photos. They could classify them as dangerous if they were taken from a certain elevation or if they were in close proximity to a body of water, or both.
In recent years, several cases of "selfie deaths" or deaths resulting from negligence while clicking a selfie have been reported.
In October, three Bengaluru boys were run over by a train while they were distracted clicking selfies, according to cops. The same month, two students slipped off a hill and died while taking a selfie.
In Mumbai last year, the police identified 16 areas as "no selfie zones" after a slew of fatal accidents in the metropolis and surrounding towns.
Several governments and regulatory bodies have now begun treating the selfie as a serious threat to public safety, leading them to launch public education campaigns reminiscent of those against smoking and binge drinking.
The Russian government in 2015 launched a safe selfie campaign. This too was in response to various instances of selfie deaths.
References:
http://wesa.fm
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/
https://www.thetimes.co.uk