Washington - In case you were starting to feel okay about Facebook, two recent studies show that the blue-and-white behemoth is ruining young girls’ self-esteem.
The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS) recently surveyed a group of its 2 700 members and discovered that one in three doctors saw an uptick in procedure requests for 2013.
The researchers attributed the rise in part to “patients being more self-aware of looks in social media”.
They write that 13 percent of plastic surgeons mentioned patients who wanted procedures specifically because they didn’t like their appearance on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Selfie.im.
Not surprisingly, many of these patients were teenage girls.
The composite face of plastic surgery is getting younger, the researchers say, noting that 58 percent of the surveyed AAFPRS members reported an increase “in cosmetic surgery or injectables in those under 30”.
In another study, researchers from Florida State University detected a link between time spent on Facebook and disordered eating patterns. They asked 960 female college students to complete a test assessing their relationship to food and weight, as well as how often they logged on to Facebook. After an association emerged between disordered eating habits and social media use, the team then swept 84 of the women into an additional experiment.
Half of the participants spent 20 minutes on Facebook before retaking the food survey; the other half used that 20 minutes to research ocelots. Again, women who had been exposed to the idealized images of themselves and their friends demonstrated more disordered thought-processes around snacking, weight and exercise than the women who looked at fuzzy cats.
Once upon a time we imbibed our unrealistic expectations for female beauty from glossies like Vogue and Elle. Today we drink them in from social sharing sites, gleamed-up corkboards we plaster with dispatches from a more perfect version of our lives.
Slate/Washington Post