It’s easy to recognize a photo from the early days of Instagram and Snapchat. Grainy, greenish sunset photos and dog-eared selfies filled social media in the mid-2010s. Augmented reality filters went viral for their ability to shrink noses and lighten skin. They didn’t fool anyone, but they shouldn’t have.
Fast forward nearly a decade and filters have stepped up their game considerably. Unlike the flower crown filters of old, which imposed a mesh selfie face on your screen using face tracking technology, the latest filters digest the image’s pixels to spit out a whole new face. Today’s online world is full of images of pore-free skin, perfectly arched brows and plump lips, but it’s not always clear who’s had a digital facelift and who’s had the real thing. The faces that hold social currency on social media — eyebrows foxed and oral fat removed — are increasingly bleeding into real life.
Non-invasive and anti-aging “tweaks” like lip fillers and Botox are at an all-time high. From 2019 to 2022, there was an 18% increase in facial cosmetic surgery in the United States. During this time, the number of Botox injections increased by 73%. And according to American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Gen Z is helping drive demand. In a 2022 survey, 75% of facial plastic surgeons reported that more clients under the age of 30 were requesting forehead piercings and lip augmentations. Their primary goal? They improve their selfies.
Even before the boom in telecommuting, the authors noted that social media shaped how people looked. In 2019, The New Yorker announced that “The Age of Instagram Face‘, an emerging look popularized by the Kardashians and other influencers that consisted of chubby, high cheekbones, cat-like eyes and lush lips. People began to look the same, the story argued. Five years later, as even more of our daily interactions take place in the visual-heavy online space thanks to remote work, the trend has intensified.
It’s not just nice to look better. We are made to feel like failures if we don’t.
Increased accessibility, reduced stigma and new pressures to keep up with the digital Joneses are fueling an explosion in plastic surgery. Increasingly, changing your face is just a matter of keeping up with the times. “Although we know no one looks like their Instagram profile,” Heather Widdows, professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick, told me, “we’re always comparing our real body to everyone else’s Instagram profile.”
Visual social media platforms have long been found to damage young people’s sense of self. A 2018 study of teenage girls found that the more time they spent using social media, the were more likely to experience “body dissatisfaction” and depression. Research published by the American Psychological Association in 2023 found that teenagers and young adults who reduced their time on social media by 50% for a few weeks they showed significant improvement in how they felt about their weight and appearance. But people are spending more and more time online, scrolling through social media and looking at themselves on Zoom calls.
Even in the early days of social media filters, researchers worried about their impact. A 2018 opinion paper by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine argued that filters have had a devastating effect on people’s self-esteem, calling the trend “Snapchat deformity.” At that time, the most used face filter on Instagram appeared hearts over eyes and Cupid’s arrows flying across the screen — not exactly a playable look.
Since then, however, the filters have become more realistic. TikTok tricks like Bold Glamour and Teenage Look seamlessly switch faces pixel-by-pixel, creating an imaginary virtual mirror that psychologists say can lead to body dysmorphia. Blemishes are blurred, skin is brightened and proportions are changed. Old face filters are a warning: See how wrinkled and saggy you’ll look if you don’t get your work done.
A 2020 study by City University of London found that 90% of women aged 18 to 30 they spoke to used social media filters to improve their appearance. A 2019 study found that people who used YouTube, Tinder, and Snapchat—especially their image-editing features—were more likely to accept cosmetic surgery. A 2022 study that looked at Gen Z Instagram users found that people who used filters to edit their photos were more willing to do cosmetic work.
Social media has also de-stigmatized aesthetic work. Plastic surgeons share videos that delve into the intricacies of various procedures, while regular users share “day in the life“Press videos that guide audiences from the treatment room through the recovery journey. The 2022 study found that people who followed an influencer who had cosmetic work done were more likely to want to undergo their own surgery. Anne-Mette Hermans, one of the study’s co-authors, predicted that it would become “increasingly normalized.”
Remote working has affected the way we present ourselves online. People may not see your bag or your shoes, but they all see your face.
The shift from surgery to minimally invasive injections has also made cosmetic work safer and more accessible to average people. “We may have always wanted to look younger,” Widdows said, “but there wasn’t much we could do to look younger.”
In a 2019 survey of Vice of Snapchat users in the UK, 59% of 13- to 24-year-olds reported seeing modifications such as Botox and fillers as comparable to a haircut or manicure. “Price-wise, there’s not always that much of a difference between going to a high-end salon and getting your hair dyed versus one or two Botox strips,” said Hermans, an assistant professor of health and wellness at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. which studies societal ideals of beauty. And when people jump on the bandwagon, it creates a domino effect, he said. “More people are doing it, which leads to more people knowing and doing it.”
Instead of the motionless face of the 1990s or the ‘duck lips’ fad of the 2010s, today’s aesthetic trends lean towards a ‘you but better’ look. The body obsession of the 2000s has been replaced by an anti-aging obsession. A market research company called Circana found that 19% of Gen Zers used antiaging serums. Preemptivenessan approach that includes a mix of skin care treatments and cosmetic injections, is being hailed as a global anti-aging trend.
“The paradox as a woman is that you don’t have to look like you’re getting older, but you also don’t have to do anything about it,” Hermans told me. “The solution is basically these natural ‘tweaks’ that make it look like you didn’t do anything.”
While the desire to defy aging is age-old, it’s not surprising that a generation immersed in social media would be especially sensitive to the natural aging process. “When you have a universal ideal of beauty,” Widdows said, “these kinds of processes become normal.”
Widdows argued that we’ve moved away from flaunting status through possessions like the “it” bag or car — we’re now chasing the “it” face. Remote working has affected the way we present ourselves online. People may not see your bag or your shoes, but everyone sees your face. “We’re moving into much more of a culture where the image speaks louder than the word,” he said. “That’s why we’re seeing people taking photos not of celebrities at cosmetic surgery, but of their own edited, filtered, perfect selfies.”
After scrolling through social media or looking at your filtered face in a video, seeing your reflection—bloated, saggy, aged—can be a frustrating reality. “The gap between the identity we present on social media and the self we see in the mirror is widening,” Widdows told me. “It’s not just nice to look better. It’s become that we feel like a failure if we don’t.”
As more people get cosmetic work done, the rest of us are losing touch with normal. It’s easy to see why more and more people buckle under the pressure to change their appearance.
Eve Upton-Clark is a writer covering culture and society.
