Before we upload a photo of ourselves to social media, like WeChat, we'll use an app to smooth our skin, make our eyes look bigger, and give us longer eyelashes and fuller lips. With a couple of touches on our mobile phone, we're able to get a quick fix and present the "best" pictures of ourselves to the world.
However, the problem is, when we simply edit our imperfections away, we're also changing the way we look at our ourselves. ①
Last month, researchers from the US Boston University published an article Selfies Living in the Era of Filtered (滤镜) Photographs. The article listed the bad effects of photo editing on people and the possibility to cause appearance worries. ②
The researchers think that these apps make it difficult to tell the lines between reality and fantasy. "These apps allow one to change his or her appearance in minutes and follow an unrealistic standard of beauty." the article says. ③
In the past, people may have compared their looks to those of celebrities who were famous that time. But for today's young people, beauty standards are most likely set by what they see on social media. From birth, they are born into an age of social platforms, and their feelings are connected to how good they look," a British doctor Escho told The Independent.
④"Now you've got the comparison of your real self to fake self that you present on social media," Renee Engeln, a professor at Northwestern University, told the HuffPost website.
Engeln further pointed out that when people spend too much time making such comparison, they may become "beauty sick" and find it difficult to accept what they actually look like.
So when we look in a real mirror, we shouldn't think to ourselves, "Do I look as good as myself in the Beauty Cam?" Instead, we should think, "I feel good, I have my health."
