For some people, taking selfies can be dangerous and even leads to death.
New research reveals that 127 people have died while taking selfies, including eight from the U.S., over the past several years, the Boston Globe reports.
More than 75 percent of those who die from “killfies” are men, and the vast majority of incidents occurred in India, researchers with Carnegie Mellon University found in a study released in November.
The people who die taking selfies are, unsurprisingly, young. People under 24 accounted for 86 of the 127 deaths, the researchers found.
Researchers found after analyzing reports of 127 selfie-related deaths that occurred between March 2014 and September 2016, the most common type of “killfie” involved “people falling off buildings or mountains while trying to take dangerous selfies.”
Water selfies took a close second place as as most dangerous selfie. In one example, 10 youths on a boat in India tried to take a selfie when “the boat tilted, and 7 people died.”
To reduce the number of selfie-related deaths, the researchers conclude that by improving location tagging for selfies, social media users could be warned in advance if it’s dangerous to take a selfie where they are.
If people continue to click and like mountain-top selfies, however, researchers warn that young people will continue to put themselves at risk for the perfect shot. The researchers also hope that their study “can inspire and provide footprints for technologies which can stop users from clicking dangerous selfies, and thus preventing more of such casualties.”
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