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NEW DELHI: Researchers have 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.

Last year, IIIT-D faculty and the "killer selfie" team leader Ponnurangam Kumaraguru 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. Of the 127 deaths they could record, 76 came from India – the highest globally.

"We also found that all the accidents and deaths occurring as part of group selfies were from India alone," says Kumaraguru, who 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," says Venkatraman, who also teaches at IIIT-D.

"We asked people if they would stop others from clicking dangerous selfies. Those from the middle class said they wouldn't, while the lower middle class said they would intervene despite the possibility of being brushed off," says Kumaraguru, explaining the rationale behind the app.

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. Elsewhere in the world, the Russian government in 2015 launched a safe selfie campaign. This too was in response to various instances of selfie deaths.

Over the last two years, several studies and academic papers analysing various aspects of the selfie phenomenon have appeared in journals globally. In 2015, University of South Carolina Annenberg's International Journal of Communication featured a paper titled "What Does the Selfie Say? Investigating a Global Phenomenon." The Journal of Travel Medicine in 2016 had a paper called "The ‘selfie' phenomenon: reducing the risk of harm while using smartphones during international travel."

(Note: An edited version of this story appeared in the print edition of The Times of India on November 28, 2017)

