Nowadays, almost every photo app and tool offers the ability to enhance some level of beauty, to hide blemishes, to remove age lines, with a range of filters and effects designed to thin your frame, so that people can be created. Feels more comfortable sharing their selfies with viewers.
The problem with this is that it also contributes to unrealistic beauty standards, with users then comparing themselves to these increasingly airbrushing and sculptural images, which often bear little resemblance to reality. It changes the quality of beauty across the board, and can contribute to negative self-perception, research shows that 32% of teenage girls feel bad about their bodies after scrolling Instagram.
But how prominent is the use of beautification filters and what are its real effects based on the original trend?
This is called beauty brand The look is fantastic Tried to determine this through a recent study, which looked at the major beauty trends across the web, with the most popular enhancement apps, to understand what drives these behaviors and how important they have become.
Such as The look is fantastic:
“In the past year, Google searches for ‘Instagram filters that change your face’ have increased dramatically by 100% As well as this Dove Recently find that 85% of young girls have already edited their appearance by the age of 13. “
This is a scary statistic, somewhat underlining the results mentioned above from Leaked report based on Meta’s own research.
In terms of the most searched for beauty procedures, LookFantastic has found that lip fillers and liposuction are one of the most popular ones.
Focusing more specifically on TikTok, the study data shows that trends related to diet and cosmetic procedures are very popular in the app.
This is again worrying, especially due to the popularity of TikTok among young viewers. And while you also consider that many top influencers are posting their content enabling digital growth, this underscores the need for more transparency in this regard – because if people build their food around completely unrealistic approaches, it can do significant harm, in many ways. .
Based on Google Play Store activity, LookFantastic also analyzed the most popular beauty enhancement apps.
You can see from these images how significantly these apps can change your appearance – and again, it’s often impossible to know when these filters and tools have been applied, which can be dangerous in terms of comparison and feedback.
Although some efforts are being made to resolve this.
In 2020, Snapchat provided initial support for a Proposing a new law In the UK that would force social platforms to digitally modify or improve the posting of labels on any posted image (proposal is Still under consideration), While Google also has The default image re-touching on its Pixel device has been removed Studies have shown that it can have negative psychological effects.
TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram have all added notifiers to images where effects have been applied – although this is not a solution, for example, users can change their photos in other apps before posting on these platforms.
There are alternative proposals with advanced systems that can detect changes in an image using a more in-depth evaluation of pixels. But so far, they have not been implemented in the social app in the sense of identification – and again, there are questions about the potential effectiveness of such a method in a way that images can be rendered before posting.
But obviously, this is a significant concern, and further steps should be considered. The platforms themselves need to be more involved in this, and provide solutions that can address this element – because at the moment, these are some of the most dangerous trends that are spreading on social networks.
You can read the full report of LookFanstastic Here.
