Migrants document their trek to safety by taking selfies along the way

Reuters/Muhammad Hamed

A Syrian refugee is pictured at the Al Zaatri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria,

As of September, an estimated 11 million Syrians had fled their homes since the war started in March 2011. They escaped to neighboring countries like Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, as well as to Europe. 

As migrants made the trek from their war-torn homes to new and unfamiliar places, many of them used messaging apps like WhatsApp, Viber, and Line in order to communicate with their families. One used a smartphone to convince the Greek Coast Guard to rescue a boat full of people, as we reported on our podcast, Codebreaker, produced with Marketplace. Others use Google Maps to track their locations.

This is the first refugee crisis that has been digitally documented. And migrants are adding to that in one critical way - they're taking selfies at different points throughout their journeys to memorialize their path to safety.

"We want memories from the bad trip we had," Mehar Ahmed Aloussi, 30, from Damascus, told TIME. "When I go and settle down in another country, I want to remember my way."

The season finale of season 2 of Codebreaker has more stories of how technology is affecting migrants: