‘Perfect Bodies and Perfect Lives’: How Selfie-Editing Tools Distort Young People’s Perception of Themselves

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds.

Like many of her peers, Abigail (21) takes a lot of selfies, tweaks them with purpose-made apps, and posts them on social media. But, she says, the selfie-editing apps do more than they were designed for: “You look at that idealized version of yourself and you just want it – you just want it to be real […] the more you do it, the better you get at it and the more subtle your editing is the easier it is to actually see yourself as that version.”

Abigail was one of nearly 80 young people interviewed as part of research into selfie-editing technologies. The findings, recently published in New Media & Society, are cause for alarm. They show selfie-editing technologies have significant impacts for young people’s body image and wellbeing.

Many young people carefully curate how they appear online. One reason for this is to negotiate the intense pressures of visibility in a digitally-networked world.

Selfie-editing technologies enable this careful curation.

The most popular selfie-editing apps include Facetune, Faceapp, and Meitu. They offer in-phone editing tools from lighting, color and photo adjustments to “touch ups” such as removing blemishes.

These apps also offer “structural” edits. These mimic cosmetic surgery procedures such as rhinoplasty (more commonly known as nose jobs) and facelifts. They also offer filters including an “aging” filter, “gender swap” tool, and “make up” and hairstyle try-ons.

The range of editing options and incredible attention to details and correction of so-called “flaws” these apps offer encourage the user to forensically analyze their face and body, making a series of micro changes with the tap of a finger.

Editing practices varied from those who irregularly made only minor edits such as lighting and cropping, to those who regularly used beauty apps and altered their faces and bodies in forensic detail, mimicking cosmetic surgical interventions.

Approximately one third of participants described currently or previously making dramatic or “structural” edits through changing the dimensions of facial features. These edits included reshaping noses, cheeks, head size, shoulders or waist “cinching.”

Young people repoarted that selfie taking and editing was an important way of showing “who they are” to the world.

As one participant said, it’s a way of saying “I’m here, I exist.” But they also said the price of being online, and posting photos of themselves, meant they were aware of being seen alongside a set of images showing “perfect bodies and perfect lives”.

Participants told us they assume “everyone’s photos have been edited.” To keep up with this high standard, they needed to also be adept at editing photos to display their “best self” – aligning with gendered and racialized beauty ideals.

Young women in particular described feeling that the “baseline standard to just feel normal” feels higher than ever, and that appearance pressures are intensifying.

These findings suggest image-editing technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) filters and selfie-editing apps, have significant impacts for young people’s body image and wellbeing.

These technologies, through their potential to alter relationship between technology and the human experience at the deepest level, may have devastating impacts on key youth mental health concerns such as body image.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/perfect-bodies-lives-how-selfie-editing-tools-distort-young-peoples-perception/