Instagram is still having some technical difficulties in finding a balance between ethical and social quibbles and its forms of entertainment.
It seems, in fact, that the elimination of likes has not taught its users much, as they are recently pouring all their interest into collectible Instagram stories filters, including those that imitate the effects of facial plastic surgery.
A game that may seem innocent and easily managed but on a large scale has decidedly negative consequences.
Not by chance, in recent years various psychology studies have been conducted on how social media affect mental health and the relationship with one’s own image, demonstrating that “prolonged exposure to idealized images on Instagram (attractive people, celebrities, faces digitally post-produced) has a deleterious impact on the image we have of our body. ” This dynamic becomes even more acute when users have the opportunity to distort their features and simulate the results of cosmetic surgery.
All this has again shaken the placid waters in which Instagram policies floated, whose consistency in matters of content appropriateness is still a mystery by itself.
In any case, Instagram has announced that it will ban a series of filters that depict plastic surgery or that could be seen as an incitement to that and will stop approving such filters from the platform, since the phenomenon is damaging the well-being of its users.
Recent updates of the app have allowed people to create, customize and share new filters and many of these, such as “plastic” or “fix me”, have quickly become very popular. But instagram is taking position, claiming to have begun removing filters that mimic facelifts, fillers, rhinoplasty and other cosmetic surgery procedures.
Spark AR, the company that produces effects for Instagram, has also communicated to the public that they will take measures to ban these kinds of filters.
Waiting to see how it will end, we suggest you not to get too used to the prominent cheekbones, to the French noses and to the thick and overflowing lips that populate our Ig stories.
