A recent ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in England may signal a change within the social media culture that pervades the lives of the general public on this planet. During this case, the ASA concluded that using filters when advertising a tanning product “misleadingly exaggerated the effect the merchandise was capable of achieving”. In step with the ASA, merely stating that a filter was used won’t necessarily be enough to avoid falling foul of the latest rules. This decision could be a welcome initiative in today’s influencer age since digitization may have adverse health effects on people, including psychological harm.
The specific technologies discussed are Photoshop and in-built filters on sites like Snapchat and Instagram. These allow tweaks to be made before an image is uploaded and features often include the removal of perceived skin imperfections and slimming of body shape. A study by The Economist reported that Instagram had a negative impact on body image in keeping with the 14 to 24-year-olds surveyed. Within the social media context, photo-altering technology can have positive effects like freedom of self-expression or creative expression. However, it’d appear that the general impact could be a negative one.
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, found a rise in mental state problems in teenagers starting in 2011 to 2013. He found that the number of ladies per 100,000 that were admitted to hospital for self-harm was stable until 2011. It then increased by 189% in young teen girls (aged 10-14.) Suicide rates followed an identical trend. The figure for older teen girls (aged 15-19) increased by 70% and for younger teen girls (10-14) by 151% compared to the figures from 2000 to 2010.
People in Britain aged 14-24 reported that they believed platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter have “detrimental effects on their wellbeing”, and studies have found that this effect is more pronounced among “frequent users.” Instagram could be a particularly egregious example. The tracking app Moment found that 63% of its Instagram users who spent approximately an hour daily on the app reported being miserable. As such, it is often concluded that social media has a control on self-image, and successively, photo-altering must even have an effect.
In 2016 Instagram described itself as “a fun and quirky thanks to sharing your life with friends through a series of images. Snap a photograph together with your movable, then choose a filter to rework the image.” This ability to “distort the fact depicted within the photos with options to govern photos via editing and filters” becomes problematic in trends like “thinspiration” or “thinspo” and “pro-ana” (promoting anorexia). These trends encourage the concept that being thin is best and far of the content uses Photoshop to ‘inspire’ people, primarily young girls, to slim and achieve the quality of beauty they idealize.
Additionally, it should not be obvious to users that several of the photographs endorsed on such pages are unrealistic. A cursory glance at the subreddit ‘r/Instagramreality’ shows that several people aren’t tuned in to how an image has been edited until it’s known. This can be a variety of dangers of photo-altering. When done on the dimensions that it’s today, it changes people’s perception of what the important build feels like. When photoshop is employed to blur out skin texture, exaggerate curves or pinch waists, it “normalizes inhuman standards of beauty.” Such practices are “warping people’s perspective of reality, whether that’s slimming down for girls or bulking up for men.” This is often incredibly harmful because it “means that folks will damage their bodies and their minds” within the pursuit of a picture that’s unattainable and/or unhealthy.
A Dutch study found that compared to exposure to original, unedited photos, exposure to edited photos of others ends up in lower “body satisfaction in adolescent girls…”. it’s troubling that “even short exposure to unfamiliar peers in a very research setting can cause direct changes in body image”, and also the cumulative psychological effect of seeing altered photos regularly can not be underestimated. It had been also found that the participants therein the study were generally unaware that a photograph had been edited. This issue is especially pronounced on social media where people interact with and compare themselves to their peers instead of famous models or actors. The effect of comparing oneself to those one considers a peer, is far stronger than when comparing oneself to someone famous.