With the constant nagging of beauty and health apps telling you how you are not beautiful enough or your nose is too big, another layer of comparison and ways to say "you're not good enough" enters the arena: social media. Social media is where users often post their filtered images for feedback, affirmation, or critique.

 

While social media claims to be a platform for sharing highlights and pictures with cute filters, centered on good feelings and fun, there is an awful lot of negativity, bragging, racial and class discrimination, and comparison leading to negative mental health consequences for many social media users. You would think, why don't we make enough noise so the social media companies will realize, get involved, and make some changes? Unfortunately, they are already in the know and actively work to hide the data of the damage to society.

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In 2020, Instagram investigated the effects of its platform on its users. In these studies, they found that "thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse" (Wells et al., 2021).

 

Even earlier than these studies, Facebook conducted studies about how Instagram was affecting young users on the platform (Wells et al., 2021​). They found that they made "body image issues worse for one in three teen girls" (Wells et al., 2021​).

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This research has been ranked as the deepest dive into big social media tech companies including focus groups, online surveys, and diary studies from two consecutive studies (Wells et al., 2021​).

 

With almost half of Instagram's users being 22 years of age or younger and bringing in more than $100 billion in revenue for the app, Facebook's research into the app has found the social comparison phenomena is worse on Instagram in which individuals are constantly measuring their value, attractiveness, monetary success, and professional success post by post. Much of what users see on the app leads to the above mentioned comparison and suicidal thoughts from not living up to what they see, eating disorders, and more (Wells et al., 2021​).

 

Having this knowledge, you might think that social media platforms would do something to either make the platform better, or support educating young minds on what they see and its effects on them. Facebook has plainly and publicly acknowledged that this data exists, yet denies its dramatic and urgent consequences, instead pushing for the little good, that is connecting people around the globe and sharing cool experiences, that exists on the app (Wells et al., 2021​).

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In the next section, we'll discuss the real life impacts of social media filters and communication theories that help to clarify why filters further longstanding inequalities within filters.