No, selfies are not more deadly than sharks

You may have seen the clickbait of the week: "Selfies have killed more people than sharks this year!"

There are three problems with this statement:

1. Almost everyone takes selfies but many, many fewer of us are exposed to shark attacks. Thus even if the absolute number of deaths from selfies is higher than that of deaths by sharks, the risk of dying from taking selfies is still much lower.

2. The headline did not lie. It is worse than lying. It misleads readers into thinking that selfies are more dangerous.

3. Your risk of dying from selfies is ridiculously low. (only 12 deaths in 9 months, and countless exposures-in both sense of the word)

Now, if someone died from taking a selfie in front of a shark, that would be something.

PS. [9/24/2015] A dialogue on Twitter reveals problem #4: the deaths while taking selfies were attributed to taking selfies but could have been attributed to other more direct causes such as climbing on top of a moving train. Meanwhile, sharks do directly attack and kill people.