Life through a Filter
Instagram, Snapchat, and the circle of beauty.
Now don’t lie to yourself. You have been there, done that- opened the camera app of your favorite social media site, and scrolled through the multitude of the versions of yourselves- marveled at the digital alter egos that the app has created for you. ‘Self-love’ they say. Or is it though?
In this highly curated world of digital presence, do you remotely resemble the person you do in your real life? I know that I don’t.
Post more reels, they say. It’s good for the ‘reach’. Reach? Reach, of what though? Of our face? Of our dance? Of our outfits? Or are we just chasing social validation while trapped in an empty room?
200 followers. 300 followers. 1000 followers. 1 Million followers. But where does it end? We used to be happy having just a score of friends at most, but are we happy with thousands of people looking at us? I know that I am not.
“But broooo..it helps small businesses.” But it also helps corporations though. Huge corporations. Huge huge corporations with deep pockets, which are trying to profit off our emotions. Businesses that tailor their ad to make us buy the right thing at the right time. ‘Personalised ads’ is the term. Personalized? Personalized to exploit our emotions? Huh? And if everyone loves small businesses, why do I see just most with just a few hundred followers.
It never ends. And if it does, it ends bad. Very bad. Bad enough that you start to hate yourself. bad enough that the only adrenaline rush you have in the day is again scrolling through the app. And we have come full circle. And that’s life through a filter.
Screentime in a World Where We Are Connected by Screens
The pandemic forced us into a way of work we had never witnessed before. From spending 13 hours on zoom calls to learning how to enjoy through teleparty, technology helped us connect in a way that wouldn’t have been possible at any other point in human history.
Those long hours of starting in the camera, of us seeing the reflection of our faces throughout the day. We had never before, in human history, spent the majority of our days staring into a mirror- evaluating our faces, being self conscious. And that’s pretty much what we did and are still doing one and a half years into the pandemic.
“There’s a well-established link between social-media usage and psychological concerns,” says Peace Amadi, PsyD, an associate psychology professor at Hope International University in California.
“Instagram has been tied to anxiety and depressive symptoms, but also to concerns such as anxiety related to physical appearance, increased body dissatisfaction, and lower self-esteem.” And now that we’re spending more minutes on these platforms, “we can assume these concerns have not only remained but increased,” Amadi says.
Self-esteem in an Age of Beautification
62% of people who click selfies started that they used some kind of face filter. On the other hand, one-third of the pictures tagged #nofilter on Instagram had some filter used. In a world where beautification is rampant, and where making your faces more appealing is the new normal- where do our undistorted, unfiltered faces fit in.
This results in low self-esteem with people turning towards products and even cosmetic changes in order to enhance their beauty- so that their offline selves can be as attractive as their online ones.
When a majority of people are in the same lane, and do the same thing, this becomes the new normal and before you know it, cosmetic procedures become as normal as putting on a face filter. Huge business for the corporations again. Bad thing for humanity. Bad for mental health and bad for how society functions.
It’s high time that we as a society decide if this is the future we want- a society filled with people with low self-esteem, low body positivity, and high usage of cosmetic procedures. It’s high time we decide if we would want our children to do the same. And it’s high time to finally decide not to go down the rabbit hole.
That filter can wait after all, but body positivity and your mental health can’t.
