Dangerous Selfies: People Are Risking Their Lives To Share That Perfect Photo [Report]

In the age of social media, dangerous selfies are taking the internet by storm. From people posing amid violent clashes, to daredevils standing on skyscrapers’ ledges, many are actually dying to share that perfect photo, according to a new report.

In case you’ve been living under a rock or don’t use social media, a selfie is a photo taken by oneself and is all the craze on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat among other sites. The thing with dangerous selfies though, is that it’s not cool if you lose your life over that perfect shot.

However, if you are into social media, it’s impossible to deny the selfie has taken over the world, not only for regular people, but celebrities and even politicians. Remember that selfie President Obama took at Nelson Mandela’s funeral which was heavily criticized? That’s how big selfies are now.

Even though there’s nothing wrong with teens (and some adults) taking a picture and posting it to Snapchat — the site that “eats” up your messages and erases them after a few seconds — dangerous selfies are being treated as a threat to public safety in some places, the Huffington Post reports.

In some instances city and national governments have started to treat the risky selfies as many did smoking or drunk driving years ago. The intention is to educate the public that certain things are either hazardous to their health or to others.

Case in point, a series of disturbing deaths, which were consequences of dangerous selfies, led to the Russian government to issue public announcements warning of certain situations.

“In June, two men in the Ural Mountains died after posing pulling the pin from a hand grenade; in May a woman survived shooting herself in the head in her Moscow office, and a month later, a 21-year-old university graduate plunged 40 feet (12 meters) to her death while posing hanging from a Moscow bridge.”

In a strange twist, Russia — one of the U.S.’s staunchest political adversaries — is in agreement with America and the European Union that the dangerous selfies must be addressed. Some examples of the disturbing trends are taking place at Yellowstone National Park, where a series of incidents in which eager tourists got too close to bison and end up getting gored, have park rangers annoyed.

Some nations, such as India, have been forced to put “no selfie zone” signs to keep people safe. According to Google, the search for the term “selfies” increased up to eight times in 2014, making that “The Year of the Selfie.”

Have you ever taken a dangerous selfie?

[Photo by Getty Images]