Goats and Soda : NPR

If you wish to put a tiger in your selfie, this Indian customer has the suitable method, posing in entrance of a photograph of the feline at a New Delhi pageant.

Sajjad Hussain/AFP/by way of Getty Images

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Sajjad Hussain/AFP/by way of Getty Images

In 2017, we explored the rise of the “kill-fie” — a portmanteau coined for selfies that put individuals susceptible to extreme harm and demise — and efforts to quash the development.

Our story reported that one nation was a hotbed of dangerous selfies. Data scientists at Cornell University performed intensive searches of on-line information accounts of demise by selfie. Their report, “Me, Myself and My Killfie”, tallied 127 selfie deaths from 2014 by means of 2016. More than half had been in India.

Now it isn’t a definitive examine. The information media does not report on each dangerous selfie. And India is dwelling to the world’s greatest inhabitants. 

Still, India took the report fairly severely. Police within the western Indian metropolis of Mumbai recognized 16 accident-prone zones the place many of the nation’s selfie-related deaths had been recorded — for instance, close to seashores and forts and alongside the favored Marine Drive which provides scenic views of the Arabian sea. Then they launched a public consciousness marketing campaign on television and posted warnings on X. Computer scientists on the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, (IIIT-D) launched a free app known as Saftie in 2017, warning selfie takers to avoid excessive threat areas.  

Have these warnings had an influence? Or do dangerous selfies stay an issue in India and elsewhere? We requested journalist Kamala Thiagarajan, who did the unique story, to observe up.

He ran away as quick as he may. It was nearly too late.

In a now-viral video from August 10, an elephant chases and practically tramples a vacationer on the highways of Bandipur National Park, identified for its nature walks, birdwatching and wildlife safaris, within the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Authorities say that the person, a vacationer from the neighboring state of Kerala, was fortunate to outlive — and that the elephant was doubtless provoked as a result of the vacationer had climbed out of his safari car and approached the animal to take a selfie.

It wasn’t an remoted incident. That identical month, an elephant charged at two males from Chhattisgarh, a landlocked state in northern India, once they tried to pose with it for a selfie. They managed to run to security.

And in 2025, India stays on the high of the worldwide checklist for harmful selfies, in line with two new surveys.

Last week, the Barber Law Firm launched findings from its evaluation of google information accounts of selfies that leads to harm or demise, starting in March 2014 by means of May 2025.

India’s 271 instances made up 42% of the full. The U.S. ranked second with 45 instances, adopted by Russia with 19.

A selfie database masking 2014 to 2023, from the insurance coverage comparability web site Swiftest. got here to the identical conclusion. It cites 190 deaths in India — practically half of all of the deaths it compiled — and 55 accidents.

Where does hazard lurk and who will get damage?

While tales of animal assaults make headlines, they are not the primary selfie menace.

According to the surveys, the most typical hazard zones are heights — waterfalls, rooftops, bridges and cliffs which might be particularly tempting backdrops for dramatic selfies.

And the primary instigators are males. A joint study by Carnegie Mellon University and the Indraprastha Institute of Technology in New Delhi discovered that roughly three out of 4 selfie-related deaths concerned males posing dangerously.

One sudden discovering, say selfie researchers, is that the victims aren’t simply the individual taking the selfie.

“One of the strange insights I found was that in places like India, a person trying to take a selfie will often fall into a river or body of water, and other people will then jump in the water to try and save the person and also lose their lives. It was something that was very troubling to learn — that one person’s mistake could lead to a wider tragedy,” says Matthew H. Nash, lead researcher at Swiftest.

What’s the motive? 

Sometimes individuals are on the lookout for web fame. And perhaps fortune. 

Psychologists say the shift to “killfies” occurs when the pursuit of on-line validation overrides judgment. “When people receive positive feedback on their selfies, that creates the desire to take more of them. Use soon becomes abuse,” says Selvikumari Ramasubramanian, a medical psychologist at MS Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation, a non-profit providing psychological well being providers in Madurai.

In the Swiftest’s 2023 survey of 1,233 Instagram customers, one in 10 admitted they might threat their security for extra followers.

Some of those high-risk selfie takers find yourself promoting photos to varied social media platforms.

And hashtags like #dangerousselfie and #extremeselfie encourage copycat habits.

An rising hazard

In India, authorities at the moment are fearful about one other potential hazard spot: huge gatherings.

Solomon Nesakumar, further commissioner of police in Kolkata, instructed NPR that crowd management is at all times troublesome and turns into much more difficult when individuals cease to take selfies or their shut cousin, video reels to put up on Instagram and different platforms.

“We need to keep the crowd moving to avoid accidents, but selfie takers don’t understand this. They put themselves and others at risk of being trampled — or worse, triggering a stampede,” he says.

At gatherings just like the Mahakumbh in the northern Indian city of Pragyaraj this January, the place hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims attend what’s thought-about the world’s largest non secular pageant, selfies were banned. 

To forestall a possible tragedy at such a giant occasion, he says, “police make frequent announcements to inform people of the ban and even temporarily confiscate phones from offenders.”

The worry of dropping a cellphone, even for a brief time period, may grow to be an efficient deterrent for dangerous selfies.

Kamala Thiagarajan is a contract journalist based mostly in Madurai, Southern India. She reviews on international well being, science and growth and has been printed in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and different retailers. You can discover her on X @kamal_t