Chart of the day: Nearly half of selfie-related deaths are caused by drowning

Updated

A US man died last week after slipping off a cliff while taking selfies at a whale-watching site in Sydney's south.

Sadly, he's far from alone.

According to Turkish clinicians who tallied up selfie-related incidents reported in the media from December 2013 to January 2017, most injuries resulted from falling, but the leading cause of death was drowning.

In more unusual cases, a Russian man died after posing with a grenade, and in 2016 a tourist in China was dragged underwater by a walrus while he was snapping a selfie with the massive marine mammal.

No wonder some countries run "safer selfie" campaigns.

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Topics: science-and-technology, social-media, photography, mobile-phones, death

First posted