Current Events II

Hi everyone, in this blog post I will be discussing the case related to body image and social media which is the case of Instagram face filters and their impact on people.

  The issue I would like to discuss in this blog post is the Instagram filters. About a year ago, Instagram filters have taken on a new dimension. Instagram users were allowed to create filters by themselves and it blew up. The problem with this was and still is that most of these filters are based on plastic surgery and the so-called perfect face. These filters are not age-restricted and therefore they are available to everyone. Imagine a 12-year-old girl using one of these filters. As she is not fully developed it can change her whole mindset on what is perceived as beautiful. Furthermore, many celebrities use these filters all the time and by doing that, they propagate them to their followers.

The picture displayed below is an example of how a filter changes your face.

      The story of British influencer Levi Jed Murph is one example of how is plastic surgery driven by social media. He has spent around 20 000£ on plastic surgeries and has risked his health several times by undergoing hard plastic surgeries. With all these surgeries done, he transformed his face into an Instagram filter face and after all those surgeries he is still receiving a huge amount of hate on the internet.

    Besides Levi, many other people aspire to look like an Instagram filter. Doctors even claim that patients are getting younger and to the consultation, they bring a picture of themselves with the filter on and try to have surgeries to look like it. In the video below, there are stories of two young girls who have undergone surgery to make their faces look like filters or facetune. One girl in the video mentions that she deleted Instagram because she was seeing all these beautiful girls and then was feeling "shitty" about herself because she does not exactly look like them. The girls also claim that they are obsessed with facetune and filters and it feels like an addiction.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. If you are interested in this topic and want to share your opinions I will be more than happy to read about it in the comments! :)

Sources:

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2019/10/how-instagram-plastic-surgery-filter-ban-are-destroying-how-we-see-our-faces