The “selfiest” city in South Africa
A new list compiled by TIME reveals which South African city takes the most selfies – and how we compare with the rest of the world.
The list was compiled by building a database of over 400,000 Instagram photos tagged as “selfie”, including a geographic location.
Time ranked 459 cities and, of the sample, 28% of the geolocated selfies came from the United States.
According to TIME’s findings, Johannesburg is the most selfie-happy city in South Africa, with 185 selfies captured by 151 users over the given 24 hour period, equating to seven selfie-takers per 100,000 people.
Cape Town was ranked second in SA, with 268 selfies by 220 users, or 6 selfie-takers per 100,000 people, followed by Pretoria (4/100k), Port Elizabeth (3/100k) and Durban (2/100k).
Selfiest cities in SA
| SA | # | Users | Selfies per 100,000 people |
| 1 | 313 | Johannesburg | 7 |
| 2 | 331 | Cape Town | 6 |
| 3 | 379 | Pretoria | 4 |
| 4 | 400 | Port Elizabeth | 3 |
| 5 | 414 | Durban | 2 |
Overall, South African cities feature far down the list, with Johannesburg at 313th, globally; with Cape Town at 331st; Pretoria, 379th; Port Elizabeth, 400th; and Durban, 414th.
Ikeja, Nigeria, is the “selfiest” city in Africa, ranked 224th overall, just above Johannesburg.
The top-ranked city in the world is Makati and Pasig in the Philippines, which has 285 selfies for every 100,000 people.
Manhattan (202/100k) and Miami (155/100k) in the USA ranked second and third, while Manchester, ranked seventh with 114 selfies per 100,000 people, tops the list for Europe.
Top selfie cities in the world
| # | City | Country | Selfies per 100,000 people |
| 1 | Makati City and Pasig | Philippines | 258 |
| 2 | Manhattan | USA | 202 |
| 3 | Miami | USA | 155 |
| 4 | Anaheim and Santa Ana | USA | 147 |
| 5 | Petaling Jaya | Malaysia | 141 |
| 6 | Tel Aviv | Israel | 139 |
| 7 | Manchester | England | 114 |
| 8 | Milan | Italy | 108 |
| 9 | Cebu City | Philippines | 99 |
| 10 | George Town | Malaysia | 95 |
“While the metric of ‘people who take selfies per capita’ is far from a perfect measure, it was far and away the most comprehensive means of comparing the 459 world cities that turned up at least 25 individual users in the database,” TIME said.
“Of course, this measure bakes in more variables than just a penchant for selfies, such as smart phone adoption rates and median income. As such, this list tends to favor regions just outside major urban areas.”
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