Why a group posed for a selfie while a boy drowned
The boy can be seen drowning in one of the images, clicked in a pond on the outskirts of Bangalore.
A 19-year-old drowned in a pond on the outskirts of Bengaluru on Sunday, while his friends were busy clicking selfies. One of the pictures actually captures Vishwas G drowning, which one of the boys noticed while scrolling through the photographs later.
While parents and relatives of the boy have protested and his college — National College, Jayanagar — has promised action against the teachers who were accompanying the students on the weekend outing, the incident is the latest in a long series of "selfie deaths".
On June 28, a 17-year-old girl died at Marine Drive in Mumbai while trying to take a selfie with her friends. In January 2016, Tarannum Ansari, an 18-year-old student, was swept into the sea at Bandra while taking a selfie. Ansari, and a man who had jumped in to save her, both drowned.
India, according to a report, saw the most number of selfie deaths between March 2014 and September 2016, though the trend is by no means limited to the country.
The Mumbai Police in January 2016 was forced to come up with a list of spots "too dangerous for selfies", while in July this year the Archaeological Survey of India banned selfie sticks in 46 of its museums.
On the other hand, smartphone makers are coming up with better front cameras -- Oppo recently launched a 'selfie expert' phone - and there are several applications promising a better selfie. So what is the appeal of the camera that makes us so unconscious of the world around? What it is about the lens reflecting our own image that blacks out everything around it?
A simple explanation would be satisfaction at efforts well turned-out. We spend a lot of time and money in looking good, why not capture the result and share it with the world? But that does not explain the near-total absorption with getting the "perfect click", and the need for adding "zing" to it — posing before an oncoming train, near a lion, at the edge of a cliff.
Is it the opposite, then? We feel unsatisfied with ourselves, and hence need to do things that make us feel adventurous, "happening", cool, and show it to the world?
Also, most selfies are clicked doing activities with some thrill attached to them. Arguably, you can feel good about yourself after meeting a deadline, preparing well for exams, managing to finish all household chores on a hectic day. Why don't we see many "tired but happy at my desk" selfie, "I made all these study notes" selfie, "My house is clean and my children fed" selfie?
The obsession with the selfie probably has to do with the extreme self-obsession, and yet the sense of inadequacy, that most of us today are struggling with.
As our friends and strangers publicly achieve milestones — take exotic holidays, buy expensive things, even get married, look pretty — and these are brought to us by the social media, we feel compelled to out-cool, out-pretty them. The scale for measuring our own achievements and adequacies is set by social media, and it is a cruel one.
The trend could have roots in the fact that more and more of us are being taught that we deserve happiness and contentment, that the world is ours for the taking, but are given no tools to deal with the disappointment that comes when these expectations are not met.
We hear of instances of selfies being clicked beside ailing relatives' hospital beds, near bleeding accident victims. Such actions are probably a manifestation of how increasingly self-centered we are becoming. To the clicker of these selfies, what was important was that they were in a hospital near a sick person, that they had witnessed an accident. The centre of any narrative is always the self, what is happening to others is merely a side-note in our own stories.
As "selfie addiction" becomes a recognised psychological disorder, what can be done to stop the obsession from turning lethal, to the selfies' subjects and to others?
A good step to start would be to recognise that what is happening in our lives is more important than what others think of it. No matter how envious our perfect photos make our friends, they won't make our problems go away.
Another would be the need to look at what we celebrate as "cool" and "happening". People probably wouldn't be tempted to pose on the edge of tall building if they knew it would attract censure and ridicule, and not social media fame.
The selfie is a manifestation of the bigger problem - our dissatisfaction with "mundane" lives and the need for approval. It is time the problem is recognised in its entirety, and steps taken to address it.