‘Perfect bodies and perfect lives’: how selfie-editing tools are distorting how young people see themselves

By Julia Coffey, Associate Professor in Sociology, University of Newcastle

Like many of her peers, Abigail (21) takes a lot of selfies, tweaks them with purpose-made apps, and posts them on social media. But, she says, the selfie-editing apps do more than they were designed for:

You look at that idealised version of yourself and you just want it – you just want it to be real […] the more you do it, the better you get at it and the more subtle your editing is the easier it is to actually see yourself as that version.

Abigail was one of nearly 80 young people my colleagues and I interviewed as part of research into selfie-editing…

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