2015 has been a year of particularly bad publicity for sharks. June and July saw a spate of attacks on the North Carolina coast, and pro-surfer Mick Fanning’s run in with a shark in South Africa became an overnight Internet sensation. Fatalities off the coasts of Hawaii, Australia, Reunion and Egypt each sparked their own media outcry, including Daily Telegraph journalist Laura Banks’ now famous rant entitled “When Sharks Are Eating People, It’s Time To Cull.”
And yet, as popular website mashable.com recently pointed out, sharks have been responsible for just eight fatalities this year, which technically makes them less statistically dangerous than taking a selfie. Last week, a 66-year-old Japanese tourist pushed the selfie death toll for 2015 to 12, after a photo on the steps of the Taj Mahal led to a fatal fall. Falling while trying to get the perfect selfie has claimed the lives of several other unfortunate photographers this year, including a 21-year-old Singaporean man who drowned after falling from a cliff on the island of Nusa Lembongan in Indonesia.
Other casualties of the current selfie craze include three college students run over by a train while posing for a shot on a railway line near Agra, India and two men killed in Russia’s Ural Mountains after trying to take a selfie with a pin-less hand grenade. In May, a 21-year-old Russian woman somehow managed to survive after accidentally shooting herself while posing for a selfie with a handgun pressed against her head. In July, the rocketing toll of selfie-related injuries and fatalities in Russia prompted the government to release an illustrated booklet warning people about dangerous selfie situations.
The Russian government is not alone in taking action against the daredevil (some would say idiotic) selfie phenomenon. In June, the European Union proposed making it a criminal offense to take selfies with certain landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower and Rome’s Trevi Fountain. For obvious reasons, Spain has issued a ban on selfies during annual bull-running events, and Disney announced that it would be banning selfie sticks in all of its theme parks “for safety reasons.” After visitors to Colorado’s Waterton Canyon kept trying to take selfies with bears, the park closed its gates permanently.
Of course, the number of people who regularly come into contact with sharks is miniscule compared to the number of people who own a cellphone, which makes it difficult to realistically compare shark-related deaths with those caused by dangerous selfie habits, as pointed out by Forbes. However, Mashable’s recent article does give a sense of perspective to an issue often blown out of proportion by the media. The selfie statistics aren’t the only ones that highlight the hysteria over shark attacks — icicles, coconuts, roller coasters and shopping on Black Friday are all more dangerous to the average person than sharks.
With that in mind, the negative attention international media has heaped on sharks this year seems somewhat overblown, particularly when you consider that roughly 100 million sharks are killed each year as compared to the human death toll of eight. Ultimately, figures like these prove that the scariest thing out there is not sharks, icicles, coconuts or even selfies — it’s us.
