INSTAGRAM has been slammed for fuelling a negative body image in young people after featuring a filter that promoted plastic surgery.
The now-deleted filter was called Fix Me and shows how a cosmetic surgeon might draw lifts and tucks on the user's face that they would then carry out on an operating table.
Example tweaks include eyebrow lifts, nose jobs and filler added to cheeks.
One student who spotted the filter wrote: "I'm sorry but why when fillers and surgery is so in demand and everywhere around young girls, would Instagram think it's appropriate to create a filter that makes your nose half the size and your lips twice as big??"
Instagram updated in August so that users could upload their own filters for others to use.
Instagram fans can search through an Effects Gallery to try a whole range of filters to try, and some are equally as worrying as the Fix Me option.
Others include Beautiful Face, Perfect Skin and Plastics and the popular HolyBucks which puts dollar signs over your selfie and enhances your lips.
The filters warp people’s faces as if they had undergone surgery, to make features more symmetrical, in proportion or enhanced.
An Instagram spokesperson told Fabulous Digital: “The Fix me filter created by a third party developer on the Spark AR platform has been removed for violating our guidelines.
“We’re constantly looking at how filters might impact people’s wellbeing and are in the process of re-evaluating our policies in this area.
“We review camera effects developed for the Spark AR Platform against Facebook’s Spark AR Policies, Terms, and Community Standards.
“Effects Instagram creates and makes available to the entire community are subject to additional requirements.
“People can report a Spark AR effect or a Story they feel is inappropriate or violates our guidelines.”
A recent study by UCL found that 40 per cent of teenage girls who spend more than five hours a day on social media showed symptoms of depression.
Social media can be used for good – but it can also be detrimental to our mental health.
And taking selfies using Snapchat filters makes young people more likely to agree with plastic surgery, according to a new survey.
The study focused on young women and found that those using Tinder, Snapchat and Snapchat filters had a higher acceptance of going under the knife.
?#Holybucks
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The survey was conducted by researchers at John Hopkins University in the US and included 252 young, white women with an average age of 25 years old.
They concluded that how people feel about cosmetic surgery is affected by social media and photo editing apps and those using Snapchat, Youtube and Tinder were the most likely to consider getting surgically enhanced.
Users of YouTube, WhatsApp and photo editing apps like Photoshop were found to have lower self esteem scores than non users.
Lucy O'Grady developed selfie dysmorphia and became so hooked on photo retouching apps that her love for plastic surgery got "out of control".
What is selfie dysmorphia?
Here's what you need to know about this type of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD)…
- Body dysmorphia is a mental health condition that causes people to excessively worry about flaws in their appearance
- Selfie dysmorphia is a category of this condition but involves people becoming obsessed with how they look in selfies and wanting to look like a filtered version of themselves
- Often the flaws they are focussing on are unnoticable to others
- This condition usually affects teenagers or young adults but can affect anyone of any age
- We don't know for sure what causes selfie dysmorphia but experts think it could be due to genetics, a chemical imbalance in the brain or a past traumatic experience
- Symptoms of body dysmorphia include worrying a lot about a specific area of your body, picking at skin to make it "smooth", looking in mirrors a lot or avoiding them altogether and spending a lot of time comparing yourself to others or trying to conceal flaws
- People with selfie dysmorphia are likely to take a lot of filtered selfies or obsess over taking the perfect image of themselves
- Treatments for body dysmorphia include CBT and anti depressant medications
On ITV's This Morning, she revealed: "I downloaded the apps and started to edit my pictures when I took them.
"I found when I was feeling down I would take some pictures. It was a quick fix to take pictures, edit and upload, thinking I look alright there.
"The trouble is when you look back in the mirror after taking away your flaws you become dissatisfied with what you are seeing."
Speaking on how filters on apps such as Instagram and Snapchat can affect a person's perspective on their appearance, Renee Engeln, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, and author of Beauty Sick said: "There’s an issue with losing perspective on what you actually look like, and it’s not something we talk about much.
"It’s not enough [to] have to compare yourself to these perfected images of models, but now you’ve got this daily comparison of your real self to this intentional or unintentional fake self that you present on social media."
We shared the social media stars leading a backlash against fake pictures and pioneering a "real fitspo" movement.
And a body dysmorphia sufferer reveals how she learned to cope after considering suicide at 13 and being diagnosed at 19.
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