Too close?
The killer in your hand
Beware: Scientists are now warning that your so-called “smartphone” could kill you.
They did not specify whether this is because the smartphone is smart and dislikes you, or because you are stupid.
But it is pretty clear the danger of the phone increases if you are, indeed, stupid.
Or, to put this simply, they think too many people die as a result of falling victim to their phones.
It appears that despite our belief that we rule the machines, the machines sometimes rule us. Or maybe it would be better said that the machines rule some of us all of the time and most of us some of the time and hopefully a few of us none of the time.
The potential for selfie harm or selfie death in Alaska is significant, but the actual number of cases of people suckered to their demise by their phone to date appears small.
Evolutionary solution
The study did, however, spark a lively and slightly distasteful discussion on the webpage of MedPage Today where “commenting is for healthcare professionals only.”
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution via natural selection – that old “survival of the fittest” theory – popped up there repeatedly.
“Natural selection at work no matter how saying this upsets the politically correct crowd” one William Brenner posted. He was far from alone in making this observation with a variety of “healthcare professionals” observing, as Brian Klonowski bluntly did, that it’s “not a public health issue, but it is definitely a lack of intelligence issue.”
There were also a fair number of references to “common sense,” though sense is far from common. What has come to be called “common sense” is knowledge gained through experience and that requires experiencing an experience.
When it comes to dealing with the natural environments, many of those who grow up in modern urban areas have no experience. Experience with crosswalks and stoplights doesn’t necessarily translate to experience with cliffs or rivers or wildlife.
Enter the smartphone and a human desire to capture memories of the moment which dates all the way back to when we were painting on the walls of caves, but today being today brings social media into the discussion of the machines and what they do to us.
Bad, bad, bad
Social media sometimes seems to get blamed for almost everything.
“Frankly, i think this is another indication of the harms caused by ‘social media,”’ SPH posted at MedPage. “Granted that there will always be people who will do dumb things but why is it that there seem to be so many more of these deaths in the age of ‘social media’ – where, as the (study) author states, ‘likes’, ‘re-posts’, etc. are valued so much. And there has been multiple testimonies to the neg effect (social media) has on the younger generation – who values peer approval….”
So social media is worse than Red Bull enticing young people to engage in dangerous stunts by offering prize money, or various kinds of equipment sponsors wanting to support “adventurers” or influencers in whatever it is they want to do, no matter whether it is dangerous or not?
One of these people not long ago fell through the ice on a local lake so the newspaper could make a big story of “Anchorage ice skater’s mishap shows the best rescue might be one you can do yourself.” The story had more than a tiny hint of having been staged with a photographer standing by to capture the moment professional adventurer Cliff Helander went through the ice and then get a close-up of how he pulled himself back onto firm ice using the ice picks he’d brought with him.
Social media is only one of the elements encouraging risk-taking gets encouraged in our society. It’s hard to quantify how big this problem.
One might ask whether there is more risk-taking going on now than in the late 1800s when American pioneers were taking off across the Wild West, or whether it is possible these seemingly “many more” deaths due to social media only seem so because we are now better connected to media and more exposed to this sort of “news.”
The Australian study said that “falls from height (were) the most common injury mechanism in selfie incidents. Drowning was the second most common cause of death.” Such deaths were happening in pretty good numbers in wild places long before the internet.
There is no good baseline data to track the numbers of these deaths before smartphones appeared on the scene or how much the death rate might have changed as smartphone use grew and selfies became commonplace.
The firm did not specifically calculate selfie-related falls or drownings, but it did report plenty of falls. Its analysis actually began by cataloging some of them, at least a couple of which could be linked to photo ops.
- On Sunday, October 4th, 2020, 25-year-old-man fell to his death at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona. When authorities recovered his body, they found the remains of other hikers who had suffered the same fate.
- A climber at Glacier National Park was killed on July 21, 2020, after falling several hundred feet off a ridge known as The Dragon’s Tail.
- There were a string of accidents in Grand Canyon National Park in 2019, involving multiple people falling to their death, at least one of which was reported to have involved someone taking a selfie.
- An Israeli teen who in 2018 fell off the cliff edge of Nevada Falls at Yosemite National Park after posing for a photo opportunity. He’d handed his smartphone to someone else to take a picture of him just as people sometimes did with old-fashioned cameras before the invention of smartphones.
Still, the firm reported that the relatively few deaths among the huge number of people entering the parks would indicate “visiting U.S. national parks is very safe overall,” which might help explain the attention given the odd selfie death here or there.
It’s the old man-bites-dog phenomenon about which the late John B. Bogart, editor of the long-gone New York Sun, observed this a century ago: “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
The Panish analysis tabulated 2,727 deaths in the parks and reported that while “nearly 3,000 deaths is a very high number, it is spread across 12 years and hundreds of sites in the U.S. National Park system.
“Additionally, there were an estimated 3.5 billion recreation visits to National Parks during that time frame. That equates to just under eight deaths per 10 million visits to park sites during that time frame.”
And the real killers are?
The data only got more interesting when those deaths were broken down. Drownings accounted for the most deaths, 668, with motor vehicle crashes second at 475. These two categories accounted for 42 percent of all deaths in the parks.
Most people aren’t taking selfies while swimming or driving. Well, hopefully, they’re not taking selfies while driving, but some might be.
“Falls and slips” were fourth on the list with 335 deaths – just behind the “undetermined” category – and not far ahead of deaths from natural causes at 285.
How many of the slips and falls involved selfies is unknown, but even if they all involved selfies, they would still only account for 12 percent of deaths in the parks, which are one of the locations people are most likely to take dangerous selfies.
The significant number of deaths in motor vehicle crashes might lead one to wonder about the use of smartphones while driving and the design of park roads, but these deaths usually aren’t selfie related.
“Rural locations may empower drivers to exhibit more reckless habits with driving (another form of risk taking), such as not wearing seatbelts, speeding, distracted driving, and even driving under the influence,” the analysis said. “Further, scenic national parks usually have twisting, winding roads through mountains that can be difficult to navigate even for the most competent drivers. The potential for a crash into a tree or another vehicle – or even to careen off the road – is very real.”
Lake Mead National Recreation Area was the leader in park deaths with 201, but few of those deaths appear to be selfie related. People die there the old-fashioned way as the park service was warning this summer.
“Six people died at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area last weekend, including three who were killed in a multiple-car accident, two who died by drowning and one who died of an apparent suicide.”
The Panish analysis also found Lake Mead among the safest national parks with its large number of deaths offset by a huge number of visitors. North Cascades National Park was the deadliest park per capita with a death rate more than six times that of Alaska’s own Denali National Park and Preserve in number two.
Denali, meanwhile, sees significant numbers of deaths related to climbing and natural causes, the latter driven by the fact the park attracts many older people on their long-dreamed-of, before-you-die tour of Alaska. The park says “the typical visitor might be a 63-year-old Californian.”
They would be sort of the opposite of those who fall victim to selfie-death. The Australian study said the mean age of selfie victims was 22.
The healthcare professionals at MedPage, who not long ago were all about masking Americans and restricting their movements if it saved enough one life, were not very sympathetic to these poor souls, most of whom were reported to be women.
The consensus opinion of the study among the MedPage crowd was probably best summed by Ralph Smallhorn who wrote that this is “probably a form of natural selection, not a public health issue. Sad but you cannot save everybody.”
There were, however, those who voiced similar sentiments far more bluntly.
“The greater public health issue would be allowing these morons to continue contaminating the gene pool,” JS wrote. “These deaths are significantly improving public health and shouldn’t be stopped!”
Death is a high price to pay for simple ignorance, especially given that common sense is something that is and can be learned. Then again, if every danger in the world is going to need to be fenced off in the name of safety, the countryside is soon going to be littered with fences everywhere.
Alaska woman falls off 60-foot cliff while texting
https://www.foxnews.com/us/alaska-woman-falls-off-60-foot-cliff-while-texting
But which was more to blame, the texting or the smoking?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/06/venice-gondola-capsizes-tourists-canal