According to Google, almost 70% of the pictures are taken with the for front-camera since the existence of it. In fact, over 24 billion photos are labeled as “selfies” in Google Photo’s. As a result, the hype of “filters” grew accordingly. Filters were often used without users even knowing it. Studies conducted by Google showed that when you are not aware of a used filter, this will negatively effect your mental health since you will compare yourself with the picture taken, which will show a unrealistic picture of yourself. In fact, the research conducted state that over 80% of the parents examined said that they were worried about the filters and two third of the examined teens mentioned that they were bullied based on how they looked on selfies. Therefore, it can be concluded that selfies are used massively and does have effect on mental health.
On the 24th of September, google and snapchat announced that they would disable the use of the so called “beauty filters”, which are turned on by default, since this would have a negative effect on people’s self-image and self-esteem especially under young girls. Among other things, these filters enabled people to eliminate minor irregularities of the skin or other irregularities. This will be done shortly through a software update which will first occur for pixel 4A and pixel 5A phones. The companies are also going to change terminology so that the filters are no longer directly associated with beauty. For example, Google now talks about a retouching function. With these changes Google wants to take the mental health of the users into account since multiple studies have shown that a beauty filter has negative impact on the self-image of users. In addition, a beauty filter would unconsciously change the “beauty ideal” which in the case of the filters are unrealistic.
The question which remains is to what extend it is good that google and snapchat take mental health into account by regulating the use of filters or is this approach “too much” since the use of filters is hard to avoid in the social media environment. What do you think?
Bibliography:
Nu.nl (2020, October 1). Google en snapchat zetten fotofilerts uit vanwege impact op zelfbeeld. Retrieved from https://www.nu.nl/tech/6081221/google-en-snapchat-zetten-fotofilters-uit-vanwege-impact-op-zelfbeeld.html
Modi, V. (2020, Oktober 1) More controls and transparency for your selfies. Retrieved from https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/digital-wellbeing/more-controls-selfie-filters/
Gomez, G (2020, October 1) Finding wellbeing in filters and selfies. Retrieved from https://material.io/blog/digital-wellbeing-face-retouching
It is a very interesting topic how the use of filters on photos negatively affects the mental health of people. Social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Snapchat) are commonly used platforms for getting fast feedback from others. Besides the effect selfies can have on mental health, selfies can reflect traditional gender stereotypes as well (Döring et al., 2016), which could also be a reason for Google and Snapchat to decrease the use of filters on the applications.
Döring, N., Reif, A., & Poeschl, S. (2016). How gender-stereotypical are selfies? A content analysis and comparison with magazine adverts. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 955-962.