How social networks affect our relationship with appearance –

snapchat dysmorphia

Networks can distort the way you see yourself (Dmitrii Khvan/Getty Images)

In 2018, scholars coined the term “Snapchat Dysmorphia”, precisely to address the cases of people who started looking for professionals with the aim of achieving an appearance as close as possible to themselves with filters. The following year, a published study in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery also showed that the use of filters was related to increased interest in cosmetic surgical interventions.

According to Pâmella Catherine Salles Santos, psychologist at the Telavita digital clinic, it is normal for human beings to search for patterns to understand and interpret the world. “That is why, sometimes, we see animal shapes and faces in common things, such as fruits and clouds”, exemplifies the specialist. “A pattern follows a ‘fashion’. Fashion, for statistics, is something that appears most frequently in a set of things. When you get out of this pattern, what you’re used to, the brain needs to make new connections, and that’s uncomfortable for it. That’s why ‘changing’ the way of seeing the world is so difficult and uncomfortable”, explains the psychologist.

The more we are exposed to an image and traits, the more we see them as normal, as the default.

And what does this have to do with social networks and the perception of ourselves? Well, it’s one thing to see something out of the ordinary in a timely manner, eventually. But, when this happens often, we change the way we see the world. “What is beautiful and unattainable becomes the ‘normal’, the new standard, and that’s where the problem lies”, relates the specialist. Think how many times you see perfect people or people with unrealistic standards on social media every day? That’s what we’re talking about.

“It is very difficult to be impacted by retouched images and remember that in fact there is a treatment in them, that reality is different. And that ends up making us feel less than what we idealize for ourselves as beauty. And the problem really starts when we try to translate ‘digital’ beauty into reality. There is a very high current demand for aesthetic treatments that bring this Instagram look to reality. Facial harmonization itself reflects this. Except for specific cases of correction, why do we have to give in to an aesthetic standard again? We talk so much about diversity and we promote homogeneity”, argues Tay Borges, image and style consultant and professor at Belas Artes.