Photoshop and filters. Everyone loves a good filter, right? However, Many of these app’s that society uses can drastically change appearance from smoothing the skin to changing the shape of your body.
Let’s talk about Instagram for example; In 2021, Instagram was estimated to have 1.074 billion users worldwide. On this app you are able to post pictures, share pictures, comment and like pictures, as well as direct messaging. Instagram is one of the most popular apps to follow celebrities and social media influencers. However a lot of these influencers tend to use an app called Photoshop.
What is Photoshop?
Photoshop is used for image-editing. Whether these images are from scratch or for editing existing images. It is highly used by photographers, advertisers, and graphic designers. Although, to access this program you do have to pay. However there are apps that you can download from your phone’s that are basically just as good and for free.
Photoshop can be a great tool for designers. However there are people that use it for completely changing how their appearance and lead people to believe that these unrealistic body goals are how you should look. This starts to make people compare themselves with a body image that is actually fake and unachievable.
Why can Photoshop be harmful?
There are many people that use these apps and don’t specify that they have used anything and this starts to teach people to hide their flaws rather than embrace the beauty within them.
No one in the world can have the most perfect, smoothest skin, or have a tiny waist. When girls see their role models posting these altered images, they start to think it’s how they should look. These types of thoughts can lead to body dysmorphia and even eating disorders.
What is body dysmorphia?
Body Dysphoria is a mental health condition that affects how you see yourself, for example; seeing yourself bigger than what you really are, spending a lot of time looking in the mirror pointing out flaws in your appearance or avoiding mirrors altogether. Body dysphoria can affect everyone, however it’s most common in teenagers and young adults. Body dysphoria can also lead to an eating disorder which is a very triggering condition that affects your physical weight. If not treated it can become very damaging and deadly.
What are the symptoms of Body Dysphoria?
Constantly worrying about your appearance or specific areas
Comparing yourself to other people (people you know or influencers)
Always looking in mirrors or avoiding them completely
Concealing your flaws with a lot of effort
Constantly picking on your looks
BD can seriously affect your life as it is a constant worry on how you see yourself and can make you insecure about things that other people may see beautiful. It can lead to self harm and depression as well as thoughts of suicide.
What is an eating disorder?
An eating disorder is a physical condition that affects your body. You worry about the amount of calories you intake to try and maintain ‘thinness’. If not treated, eating disorders can become deadly, as people with eating disorders are at high risk of heart and kidney failure. Some people try to physically make themselves sick after eating to get rid of calories they have consumed. You become very aware of what it is you’re eating or there are some that don’t eat at all which is very dangerous.
Symptoms
Fear of gaining weight
Distorted body image
Extreme thinness
Restricted eating
There are also a lot of physical symptoms that can develop overtime including: infertility, damage to the heart, low blood pressure, constipation, bones thinning/weakness and brittle hair and nails.
Not only body dysphoria and ED, but this can also cause depression. Scrolling through social media comparing yourself to every ‘perfect’ picture you see can lead to harming yourself not only physically but emotionally too. There needs to be a warning to these young girls that what they are seeing is very heavily edited.
Social Media
As well as Photoshop, you can get in app filters that you can access that can change how you look. It doesn’t go as far as to distort the way your body looks like some other apps such as Photoshop, but some of these filters can drastically change your face. They can add makeup on to you, cover blemishes, change your hair, etc. Although there are a lot of social media influencers that use these apps and filters, there are also some recently posting pictures of before and after photo editing and encouraging girls to love themselves.
Not only girls, there is a certain expectation for boys to be very masculine, have a chiseled jaw, and no blemishes. Young boys looking up to these men can also experience body dysphoria and eating disorders just as much as it can affect girls. However it is more common for girls.
How bad can Photoshop and filter be?
Photoshop and editing apps/filters can be very dangerous not just for your physical and mental state, but as well as your safety. On social media it is very easy to pretend to be someone you’re not and lure people into fake relationships that can be very damaging both physically and emotionally. For example, the show ‘Catfish’. There are hundreds of people that get ‘cat fished’ due to Photoshop and filters, from older men pretending to be younger and much different from how they really look to girls completely altering their appearances or even using other girls’ pictures and speaking to people pretending to be someone they are not.
Although there are a lot of bad effects that Photoshop and filters can cause, they can also be very positive as an example of how unrealistic these body types are and be used creatively.
Furthermore, these apps can be very addicting and it can become very damaging for their own mental health. Nowadays Photoshop and filters are a necessity for some people with them not being able to live without a filter or adjusting the size of their hips. We need to not only distinguish the difference between real and fake, but we need to start loving ourselves and embracing our imperfections. We are all uniquely beautiful in our own way. Let’s start encouraging the younger generation that you don’t need a filter or anyone else’s body to be perfect.