Curious facts about selfies in different cities of the world

It turns out that in different countries, Instagrammers take different self-portraits - the so-called "selfies". This conclusion was reached by a group of American researchers after processing 650,000 photographs taken in several metropolitan areas of the world over eight days, December 4-12, 2013.

Let's see what selfies Muscovites and residents of other cities take.

(Total 7 photos)

1. The Selfiecity project, which took about two months, involved 5 cities: Moscow, Bangkok, Berlin, New York and Sao Paulo. Of the total number of photos from each city, 640 of the most “high-quality” pieces were selected, directly depicting the face of a person who photographs himself (presumably) from an arm's length.

By the way, selfies make up only 3-5% of all photos posted on Instagram, most of the pictures depict other people, pets, landscapes and food.

The data obtained was sorted in a very interesting way: in addition to the standard ones - location, age, gender, the researchers studied such features as where a person looks in the photo - “up or down, right or left”, how much he tilts his head to achieve an advantageous angle, whether he wears glasses, and even how wide his eyes are.

2. So, the results showed that the most smiling and positive people live in the capital of Thailand, sunny Bangkok. As for the ratio of male and female photos, the difference in number is the smallest here: women post on Instagram only 30% more than men.

3. Next comes the no less sunny Sao Paulo, where selfies also show joy and good mood.

Sao Paulo girls love to tilt their heads when taking pictures, and do it more often than residents of other cities.

On average, in order to look as impressive as possible, women prefer a photo with a head tilt 15% more often than men.

4. But Muscovites, on the contrary, do not want to give their audience a smile. Our selfies are the most serious selfies in the world! On the other hand, in terms of gender, the number of female portraits far exceeds male ones: 80% to 20%!

5. The average age of selfie takers is 24 years old. But, of course, one must take into account possible errors in the calculations, and the relative reliability of the information indicated on Instagram. After studying the selfies of Berliners, the researchers concluded that visually they look a little older than their age. And if you believe the statistics, here women post photos almost 2 times more often than men. In the photo - Berlin selfies.

6. The oldest Instagrammers are New Yorkers, with an average age of 25.3. As for choosing a pose for a selfie, the female half of the city does not tilt its head, as in Sao Paulo, but “turns” a little.

7. In general, the project showed that, regardless of nationality and place of residence, women's selfies are much more expressive and emotional than men's.

Well, let's see how these trends will change in the future - the genre of "selfie" on Instagram continues to gain popularity, because even the Oxford Dictionary recognized "selfie" as the word of 2013.