Are you a selfie addict? This Kolkata based psychiatrist's scale can tell

With the emergence of social media and smart phones in the digital era, selfies have become a rage with Facebook and Instagram providing a platform to youngsters for sharing their clicks with several people they can reach out to across the world.

But with time, people seem to have taken the trend a bit too seriously with people clicking between a dozen to few dozen selfies every day. The situation may even seem alarming when reports of people ending up dead while trying to click selfies emerge.

In recent times many have suggested that this obsession with selfies, which can be very annoying for others, is actually a mental health issue, since the effects can range from an addiction to issues with self esteem.

While some researchers suggest that even suicidal tendencies can be indicated by the kind of selfies people share on Instagram, a psychiatrist in Kolkata has actually come up with a scale that can tell if a person is a selfie addict or not.

The scale which is yet to be registered officially under Awadesh P Solanki’s name will be known as the Solanki scale. He came up with the idea while observing people clicking selfies when he was doing his post-graduation from the Institute of Psychiatry in Kolkata.

He has already talked about his research at the Royal College of Psychiatrists and will be sharing details of Solanki Scale at the world congress on psychiatry in Cape Town later this year.

His research brought out some very interesting observations about the selfie craze, as it mentions that while women give priority to their looks while clicking selfies, men are more concerned about the location.

The study even mentioned that ‘selfie compatibility’ plays an important role when it comes to a lot of women choosing their male partner or boyfriend. For men it’s more about showing off selfies at dangerous heights or thrilling locations, something that leads to deaths caused by selfies that are being increasingly reported globally.

Solanki says the results of the scale are 96% correct, and it will increasingly instrumental in helping people when an everyday activity turns into a dangerous and often fatal addiction.