Tel Aviv a world leader in ‘selfies’
Time Magazine study finds that residents of Israeli city love taking self-photographs
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleLazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Tel Aviv has been called many things. The White City. The gay capital of the Middle East. Israel’s cultural capital.
According to Time Magazine, it’s also one of the “selfiest” cities in the world.
The magazine released a study this week examining how many “selfies” cities around the world produce per capita, and found that Tel Aviv clocked in at No. six.
A selfie is a self-photograph that young social media users often take.
The study found that Tel Aviv has 139 selfie-takers per 100,000 people. Makati City, Philippines, had the most, with 258. Manhattan came in second, followed by Miami.
“The photos were downloaded from the Instagram API in two sets of five days: from Jan. 28-Feb. 2, 2014 and March 3-7, 2014,” explained Time. “Each day’s data consists of the 24-hour period from midnight to midnight to account for all time zones equally. During that time, 402,197 Instagram photos tagged ‘selfie’ that included geographic coordinates. That only accounts for a fraction of all selfies uploaded during that time, since the majority of photos do not include a location. Of this sample, 28 percent came from the United States.”
UAE emirates Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah were the only other Middle Eastern cities to crack the self-centered top-100 list.
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