Should land managers be doing more to avert social media-related injuries and fatalities at tourism hotspots?

Abstract

Land Managers have a crucial role to play in ensuring the publics safety across a diverse array of geographies and jurisdictions. With the rise of social media, new risks and threats to public safety have surfaced and left Land Managers in a seemingly never-ending cycle of mitigating one dangerous social media hotspot while the next quickly emerges. New approaches need to be taken to stem the incidence of social media related injuries and fatalities and Land Managers require more support to mitigate these incidents. There is an urgent need for collaboration and innovation between the research and technological sectors and land management agencies. Novel approaches are needed to combat this contemporary problem and we argue that a public health approach, in strong collaboration with Land Managers, is necessary to mitigate harms stemming from social media.