Standing on the
edge of a cliff with the most stunning views and taking a selfies may sound ideal for your Instagram post,
but one slip could mean breaking all bones, being bed ridden, or even losing
one’s life.
But the sad part is that such pictures and videos go viral and
rather than make them realize the danger, they lure the youth to attempt the
same. Just recently a young man was seen doing daredevilry on his bike on the
roads of the Zuari junction, on the highway to the Goa airport, and his video
went viral, collecting a lot of flak from people and raising this question of
rise in such risk taking acts.
Here is something worth considering. The selfie mania alone has
taken over some 250 lives world over since the year 2011 and shockingly more
than half of those deaths have occurred in India.
Putting across his point of view, Sunil, a senior citizen from
Porvorim expressed, “It’s all because of unlimited and uncontrolled access to
internet, everything is available for everyone to watch and sadly the human
behavior always tends to pick up the more thrilling and negative things without
realizing the danger as a result of this behavior.
Moreover, people who perform such risky acts are often portrayed
in social media as doing heroic acts. This is exactly what entices the youth to
take this further.”
So many cases of untimely deaths and accidents have been
registered, where just the superficial need of gaining fame and popularity on
social media has taken lives of people, especially youngsters.
Ashish Kapur, an events person and social media influencer,
said, “I feel that youngsters today have a lot of time at hand and in a short
span of time, without achieving anything with their hard work, they want fame,
and that is the reason they get into such things without considering the
outcome. All they need is attention.”
Recently, news of a
23-year-old girl who performed extreme yoga poses went viral, when one of her
poses almost cost her life. She was trying to attempt a very risky pose on her
6th floor balcony and just as her friend clicked her photo, she lost balance,
slipped and fell 80 feet, fracturing almost all bones in her body.
Forget yoga, she cannot
walk for another three years as doctors have to reconstruct her legs and
ironically, her social media profile was used for asking blood for her
treatment. So in the end, was it really worth that one jaw dropping (literally)
photo?
“The world wants to
go viral and famous and nowadays, people go to any extent to attain it. What is
surprising is that it is not just the “wannabe” youngsters; when it comes to
getting quick fame, age is not the criteria. There are so many issues in our society
that need to be addressed and one can work on making them viral with the same
amount of effort. It’s all about the #trendingkeeda now,” says Nishkala, who
runs a PR and social media firm.
The “keeda” is taking
lives. We spoke of 250 lives worldwide since 2011. The number of cases that go
unreported or near to death ones are much higher. A whopping 60% of
selfie-related deaths is what India has to its credit.
In some places, the
police and government is deciding to mark certain zones as ‘selfie free’,
calculating the danger those places may possess.
There have been cases
of people getting hit by trains, falling into rivers, falling from heights,
getting drowned in the sea and many others, where the risk was always evident,
but they went ahead nevertheless and also no one stopped them from doing so.
Apart from the people
who click these risky pictures, there is another lot who click other people’s
videos and pictures and post them on social media. People clicking selfies with
a dead body, or numerous people making videos when an accident takes place on
the road... what kind of a mindset do these people have? What would we say
about these kinds of people who aren’t worried about the trouble and pain of
the other person dying on the road, only concerned about generating content
that will go viral on their social media?
In a case that
garnered worldwide headlines, a group of bystanders took selfies in front of
three men who were dying on a road after being involved in a crash. No one
called an ambulance or helped the victims, who were covered in blood and
writhing in pain, all they were concerned about were their selfies that would
get them likes and attention on the social media.
“It’s disconcerting
how many ghost accounts on social media have the last selfies of those who lost
lives and did not live to post a new one! Social media validation thrills but
sadly kills too. If only we had more public service messages in the media
today, says Laila Fatima, owner of Laila’s Café.
To conclude, all we
can say is that don’t make that thrilling stunt the last stunt of your life;
don’t let that photograph be your last picture ever, do something which is more
productive. Think of more creative ideas to garner fame. Sing, dance, joke,
paint, tell stories and put these videos and pictures and you will definitely
get the required attention, but don’t do anything that risks your life or the
lives of others.
‘Likes’ are not worth risking your life.