We’re all guilty of it — you’re in the middle of a party or at an exotic locale with your friends and instead of enjoying the moment, you take your phone out and begin clicking dozens of selfies, just to get that one “perfect” image that captures the moment.
And while it may seem a harmless thing to do, a recent report in the Washington Post has claimed that 27 selfie-related deaths were reported in 2015, with about half of them occurring in India.
Just a week ago, a young man in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, was killed as he fell into a canal while trying to take a selfie. A similar incident happened at Jodhpur’s Mehrangarh Fort when a tourist tried clicking a selfie.
“In order to get likes, you think you have to get the ‘perfect selfie’. And the excitement of taking the ‘perfect’ selfie without paying attention to their surroundings is what’s dangerous,” says Dr Diana Monteiro, a counselling psychologist from the city. But actually immersing yourself into clicking the right picture, experts say, stems from a larger problem —low self esteem.
“Just taking a selfie is fine, but if you’re obsessed with taking the ‘right’ selfie and constantly trying to put yourself into situations that would be a ‘perfect’ image of yourself out there, that would be considered a disorder,” Dr Monteiro says, adding that looking for extra validation through likes and comments on social media is a sign that you may have a problem with your self esteem.
The need to keep up with your friends, too, plays an important role in the obsession, says Dr Pulkit Sharma: “If you see that your friends have put up something on a social networking site, you start to feel envious. And you want to outperform those in your group or those that you envy.”
And with the selfie-addiction becoming a very normal thing with people of all ages, the only real option to ensure that selfies don’t turn fatal is to keep a safe distance — not from sight-seeing, but from your smartphone.
“Just like any addiction, the first thing to do would be you stop doing the activity that you’re addicted to. Maybe try to monitor the time you spend on social media and try to spend that time with actual people around you instead,” says Dr Monteiro, while Dr Sharma adds, “Being close to technology only encourages this behaviour. People could also observe a gadget-free time every day for about three to four hours, where you won’t login to Facebook or go online.”
