Just one click on the “glossy babe” filter and the teenager’s face was subtly elongated, her nose made neater and a dusting of freckles sprinkled across her cheeks. Next, a “glow makeup” filter erased skin blemishes, puffed her lips into a rosebud and extended her eyelashes far beyond what makeup could achieve. With a third click her face was back to reality.
Hundreds of millions of people now use beauty filters to alter their appearance on apps including Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. This week TikTok announced new worldwide restrictions on children’s access to those that ape the effects of cosmetic surgery.
It came after an investigation into the feelings of nearly 200 teenagers and parents in the UK, US and several other countries found girls were “susceptible to feelings of low self-worth” as a result of their online experiences.
There is rising concern about the wellbeing impact of such rapidly advancing technology as generative artificial intelligence enables a new generation of what have been termed “micro-personality cults”. It is no small matter: TikTok has approximately 1 billion users.
A forthcoming study by Prof Sonia Livingstone, a professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, will argue that the pressures and social comparisons that result from using increasingly image-manipulated social media may even have a greater effect on mental health than seeing violence.
Hundreds of millions of people are using alternative reality filters on social media every day – from comic dog ears to beauty filters that reshape noses, whiten teeth and widen eyes.
Dr Claire Pescott, an educationist at the University of South Wales who studied 10- and 11-year-olds, agreed the impact of online social comparison was being underestimated. During one study a child, unhappy with their appearance, told her: “I wish I was wearing a filter right now.”
“A lot of education is on internet safety – keeping ourselves safe from paedophiles or catfishing [using a fake online persona to enable romance or fraud],” she said. “But actually the dangers are with each other. Comparing ourselves with others is having more of an emotional effect.”
But there is resistance to restrictions on effects that some people feel are a fundamental part of their online identity. Olga Isupova, a Russian digital artist living in Greece who designs beauty filters, said such moves were “preposterous”. She added that having an adapted face was a necessary part of being “several persons” in the digital age.
“One lives their ordinary life, but it’s not the same life as online,” she said. “That’s why we need a corrected face for our social media life. For many people [online] is a very competitive arena and it’s about Darwinism. Many people use social media not just for fun but as a place to lift them up in life, for the future, to earn money.”
Either way, TikTok’s age-block on some filters is unlikely to solve the problem fast. One in five eight- to 16-year-olds lie to social media apps that they are over 18, research from the UK communications regulator Ofcom found. Rules to toughen up age verification will not become effective until next year.
There has been a steady stream of research indicating the risks of some beauty filters to teenagers. Last month, a small study of Snapchat-using schoolgirls in Delhi found most reported “a reduction in self-esteem, experiencing feelings of inadequacy when juxtaposing their natural appearance with their filtered images”. A 2022 inquiry into the views of more than 300 Belgian adolescents found using face filters was linked to their likelihood to accept the idea of cosmetic surgery.
“Some kids are resilient and see these images and say ugh, that’s a filter but those that are more vulnerable … are prone to feeling bad when they see it,” said Livingstone. “We’re seeing more evidence that teenage girls are feeling vulnerable about how they look.”
When TikTok’s research partner, Internet Matters, asked one Swedish 17-year-old about beauty filters, she said: “From never having had anything against my lips before, I can no longer look at them without feeling that they are far too small and should look more like the effect.”
The social and psychological consequences of the most extreme beauty filters now need more experimental research, said Jeremy Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford University’s virtual human interaction lab.
In 2007, he helped coin “the Proteus effect” – a term to describe how people’s behaviour can change to conform with their online avatar. People who donned attractive virtual selves disclosed more about themselves than those with less attractive ones.
“There needs to be a careful balance between regulation and concerns about wellbeing,” he said. “Even slight modifications to virtual selves can quickly become tools we rely on, for example the ‘touch up’ feature on Zoom and other video conference platforms.”
In response, Snapchat said it did not typically receive feedback about the negative impact of its “beauty lenses” on self-esteem.
Meta, which runs Instagram, said it was treading a fine line between safety and expression with its augmented reality effects. It said it consulted mental health experts and banned filters that directly encourage cosmetic surgery – for example, by mapping surgery lines on to a user’s face or selling procedures.
TikTok said there was a clear distinction between effects such as animal ears filters and those designed to alter appearance, and that teenagers and parents had raised concerns about “appearance” effects. As well as restrictions it said it would raise awareness among people creating filters “of some of the unintended outcomes that certain effects may pose”.
