We’ve spoken about the topic of social media and plastic surgery in the past, but with a lot of the country still attending work and school from home these days, and being confined to their homes, we’re spending a lot more time on the computer.
In addition to ensuring we maintain good work ethic and continue with our studies on the computer, we’re using social media and our mobile devices to keep in touch with those family and friends that we cannot see in person.
As if social media wasn’t already this sort of “doctored” look into the lives of people, now, more than ever, it can bring down our self esteem and make us think twice about what we’re doing with our lives.
And this is a problem.
Social media in itself can be a wonderful tool to help keep people connected, but it’s also an easy way to spread false information. We see it a lot these days in terms of the political landscape, but where it most affects us as individuals is in the lifestyle photos and stories that we see.
Celebrities, as well as friends and family, are usually making sure that they are only posting the photos that make them look good. Whether that’s physically good or like they are living a lavish lifestyle that most people only dream about. Nobody is taking 20 selfies just so they can post the bad one or posting up a photo of them and their friends all sitting around a pool on their phones having a boring time. No, they are posting the photos of them smiling at the beach with the sunset at their back.
Social media gives off this false perception of what our lives are really like. And when we see someone else, whether that’s a friend or a celebrity that we follow, posting up all these amazing pictures, while we’re sitting on the couch watching reruns of The Office, it makes us feel bad about ourselves. And this is a problem.
How Social Media Creates Unrealistic Plastic Surgery Expectations
A great example of how social media skews our view of people is a photo that Khloe Kardashian posted a few weeks ago.
It should be of no surprise to most people that the Kardashians are notorious for only posting photos that make them look incredible, but you need to be wary of the overly processed photos that seem to make them look too good.
And this doesn’t just go for the Kardashians, you’d be surprised how many celebrities (and even your friends) that are manipulating their appearance before posting photos.
And this manipulation doesn’t just come from using Photoshop. The filters on some of these photo apps can be used to enhance your features, smooth out your skin, and even allow you to pull in various features to appear slimmer. And that’s just the manipulation that is done in the computer.
Make-up is another way that people make themselves appear different in photos than they would in real life. And when it comes to celebrities, they have access to some of the best make-up artists in the world.
This photo manipulation on social media has led to women and men feeling very self-conscious about themselves. It can cause self-esteem issues as well as mental health problems. And it’s causing the younger generation of girls to feel like they are inadequate when compared to what society dubs as “beautiful”.
In terms of plastic surgery, seeing all of these manipulated photos online, while also having to look at ourselves all day in video conferences for school and work, is leading to people wanting to modify their bodies in order to look like those “beautiful” people they see online.
And we’re not saying that the photos you see on social media aren’t of beautiful people, we’re saying that the photos you’re seeing most of the time are not what those people look like in real life. So going into a plastic surgeons office with a highly Photoshopped picture of Khloe Kardashian and telling the doctor that you want to look like her in that photo, is completely unrealistic.
Of course, there are certain things that plastic surgery can help with when it comes to changing your appearance, that’s part of the reason elective plastic surgery exists, but expectations need to be properly managed.
Please don’t rush into any sort of plastic surgery procedure based on something you’ve seen on the internet. Plastic surgery should be performed in a way that it’s almost hard to tell that any work has been done, you don’t want to end up looking like a plastic barbie doll.
At Dr. Adams Plastic Surgery, we will sit down with you to discuss why you want to have plastic surgery done and what the best options are for you. We want to ensure that our patients look good and feel good, with no regrets. So contact us today for a consultation!
