Are selfies the ultimate in shallow vanity or an empowering, confidence-boosting tool of self-appreciation? Who knows? But in Miami, we take a lot of them. In fact, Time magazine has concluded the Miami area is the third most selfie-obsessed city in the entire world.
To come to that conclusion, the magazine pulled a database of 400,000 Instagram photos posted over a recent ten-day span that were both tagged with #selfie and included geographical coordinates. The number of selfies taken were then compared to the area's total population and ranked by number of #selfies per 100,000 residents.
For the study, it appears Miami and Miami Beach were grouped together and counted as one area.
Makati City and Pasig, Philippines, came in first as the world's selfie capital with 258 selfie-takers per 100,000 people. Manhattan came in second, with 202 selfie-takers.
Miami then came in third overall with 155 selfie-takers.
Each yellow dot on the map below shows where each selfie was taken during the ten-day span.
The concentration of selfies taken along the tourist-heavy eastern parts of South Beach does seem to suggest Miami's total selfie rate could be inflated by visitors bragging about their vacation. Miami attracts shallow tourists? Who would've thought.
However, there are lots of selfies taken along the less tourist-heavy Biscayne corridor, so we can't blame it all on outsiders. Selfie use, though, does seem to peter out as you head west.
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