From the 7 years Facetune has existed, it helped perpetuate the same boring “Instagram face”- basically: plump lips, white teeth, a thin nose, big eyes, clear skin and a skinny body. Within 2 years of Facetune being in the app store, it had made about 18 million dollars from 4.5 million downloads, in which the app cost 3 -4 USD.

Facetune is a photo-editing app which was introduced in March 2013. It allows its users to easily edit how they look in their photos by doing things such as whitening teeth, smoothing out skin and removing acne or pimples. Sounds simple enough, so how bad can it really be?

Well, to start, many of us know that this would probably cause people to develop negative body image, but this has been happening for decades. Now, however, it has moved from shiny magazine covers to virtually everywhere on social media… But how bad is it really? It wouldn’t cause a huge problem if you edited your pictures slightly to make them look better… or would it?

The growth of selfie culture is perhaps the most shocking consequence of these platforms, promoting a world obsessed by money, beauty, power and fame. Apps such as Photoshop and FaceTune are leading the way for unrealistic beauty standards, and are therefore partly to blame for the growing epidemic of body dysmorphia and mental health issues.
A study from the National Institute on Media and the Family found that 78 percent of 17-year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies — a clear sign that some.
Mental Health, Mindset Social media is a very visual medium, especially apps like Instagram. It’s well documented that a lot of ‘grammers’ use Facetune to edit their photos.
Arumugam, for example, thinks keeping a natural, realistic, and consistent image of herself is not just helpful for her own mental health, but her followers' too. 'Contrary to the belief of many influencers and models in my industry, there's a part of me that believes my followers prefer to see me post photos of myself raw, unedited, and real.

It has. From the 7 years Facetune has existed, it helped perpetuate the same boring “Instagram face”- basically: plump lips, white teeth, a thin nose, big eyes, clear skin and a skinny body. Within 2 years of Facetune being in the app store, it had made about 18 million dollars from 4.5 million downloads, in which the app cost 3 -4 USD. In 2015 [source] and by the end of 2016, the company that created Facetune, Lightricks, had launched Facetune 2, which is free to download but requires its users to pay a monthly fee of $5.99 to unlock all of the features. Its features even include a live-editing feature which allows users to change their photos before they’re taken, and by spring 2018, the app had already been downloaded more than 20 million times, with nearly half a million people paying for all of the features [source].

What makes it so popular in comparison to other apps such as Photoshop, is its simplicity. Unlike Adobe Photoshop, which requires a full course to understand, Facetune has simple symbols to show the user how to use it. It’s only gotten worse over the years as more and more people are undergoing plastic surgery [source].

All-around, despite the many communities of self-love and body positivity on social media platforms, there are just as many communities (if not more) who regularly post their Facetuned selves, hoping for likes and shares- only, they have to be subtle enough so as to avoid getting ‘called out’ for changing their appearance. The truth is that trying to balance authenticity and wanting to make oneself look as good as possible all the time is near impossible.

Now, as stated at the beginning of the article, this does create body image issues, especially in younger people, who may not be able to see a curved fence or background (a key giveaway of an edited full-body photo); they would instead see ‘#body goals’.

However, it isn’t all bad; people are becoming increasingly aware of this. For example, on Instagram, there are many accounts showing before-and-after pictures of the effects of Photoshop on people, one such (highly popular) account is @celebface with 1.3 million followers. There is even a subreddit (R/Instagramreality) that shares the same thing, ensuring that Internet users across all platforms are aware of this distortion of reality.

If there is one thing to take away from all of this, it is: do not believe everything you see on the Internet- and do not compare yourself to online ideals that you know in the back of your mind are unrealistic. This is something we all struggle with, but by succumbing, you are only giving imaginedrules power over you. Stay confident and sceptical (and wash your hands!).

There’s a whole world of apps that will physically shape your appearance, quicker than you can say, “body dysmorphia.” Pixabay

A few years ago, a friend told me he would use the liquify tool in Photoshop to make himself appear slimmer in his party pics when he posted on Facebook. And he was doing this non-ironically.

When he told me this, I thought, “that’s really so flippin’ weird.”

SEE ALSO: Why Taking Compliments Is So Hard, And How to Accept Them

My friend was trying to create a false visual narrative of himself—a reflection on how he foresaw wanting to be perceived by the world—largely based on personal insecurities. Sure, social media, like Disneyland, is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, but now teens (and adults) feel the need to distort their reality to feel better about themselves and create a physical fantasyland for the world to see.

Remember when we used to be outraged when we were told that a model’s body and/or features in a magazine had been airbrushed using Photoshop—and how that perpetuated body image issues in women? Well, we are now that model, and all of the tools for airbrushing are currently in our hands.

Now, there’s no need to use the liquify tool in Photoshop to create a false physical narrative about ourselves. There’s a whole world of apps that will physically shape your appearance, quicker than you can say, “body dysmorphia.”

Facetune And Mental Health Software

I recently got an email from the app company AuraGlow. Spoiler Alert: The app is absolutely asinine. The only function is to make your teeth look whiter in selfies. Yuck. The “official story” is the app is supposed to show you what your teeth look like with whitening products. No. No. No. Stop creating apps with the only purpose of making people look better in their Instagram photos than they look in real life. It’s messing people up. AuraGlow is just yet another app trying to create a false narrative.

The larger issue? Apps, such as these, create an unrealistic physical appearance that’s dangerous to the minds of young adults. Did you know that this type of false physical narrative on social media is one of the leading causes of teen depression? FaceApp at least had a fun purpose of making you look old in your selfies (as well as making you vulnerable for Russian to steal your data).

In studies, Instagram has been noted as the worst social media platform for mental health. How would a reclusive teens feel about themselves if they saw all of their classmates on Instagram with Aura Glow smiles along with a Skin Tanner bronzed body?

In the description for the Skin Tanner photo tanning app, it mentions that the photo filter is a “safe alternative to sunbathing and UV tanning” along with the disclaimer that “this app will not tan your skin in real life.” (Were users previously duped by this Portrait of Dorian Gray app?)

In the apps own words: “Get the Perfect Tan in Your Photos!”

“How would you look with a tan? With Skin Tanner, you can get the perfect skin tan in your photos easily! Simply select the areas of your face & body that you’d like to tan, and then adjust the strength of the tan,