How Snapchat dysmorphia drives teens to plastic surgery to copy looks phone camera filters give them
- Young people look obsessively through heavily filtered photos of influencers on Instagram, Snapchat and Weibo, and of themselves, then ask surgeons to copy them
- More than half the plastic surgery clients in China are under 28; the average age at which western Europeans have cosmetic surgery has fallen by five years
A decade ago, clients came into plastic surgery clinics carrying photographs of models, celebrities or even a particularly attractive family member. Today, they clutch heavily filtered images of themselves.
“Social media is having a substantial effect on our culture as a whole,” says Julian De Silva, a plastic surgeon based in London’s Harley Street. “It’s heavily influencing plastic surgery trends and cosmetic treatments – and there has been a very rapid change over the last five years.
“Patients are taking more photos of themselves than ever, and as a result they are far more self-conscious about their appearance. Flaws they would previously have ignored have, since the advent of social media, plagued them.”
As a result, not only are the number of plastic surgery cases on the rise globally, the average age of clients has dropped, falling from 42 to 37 in western Europe.
In China, the statistics are particularly stark. A report released last year by cosmetic procedure platform GengMei (which means “more beautiful” in Chinese) valued the domestic cosmetic surgery industry at US$71.8 billion. The report found that the number of new clinics opening last year increased by 10 per cent in comparison with 2017.
