Generation “Selfie”: Social media influences customer wishes

With the newest type of portrait photography, we all don’t really need a photographer anymore. A smartphone is already enough. Clearly – we’re talking about selfies here, which have gained a lot of importance in recent years. And for a long time now, a selfie has been more than just a snapshot, especially among the younger generation. The picture that looks so spontaneous is planned and elaborately staged. But sometimes the pictures taken of oneself are not favorable. Proportions don’t look right, the nose looks bigger than it is in some pictures. All this makes some patients wish for a beauty treatment.

What is a selfie?

Selfie is one of the terms of the 21st century that you should inevitably know. This is a selfie, usually taken with the camera of a smartphone, sometimes with a digital camera. Characteristic of a selfie is the visible outstretched arm holding the camera. Sometimes selfies are also shot with a selfie stick or via a mirror. There are pictures that show only one person, but also group selfies. In this case, the photo is taken by a person who can also be seen on it. People like to post the pictures on the Internet, where they are shared with others on social media, or social networks.

The significance of the selfie has changed

What was initially considered more of a spontaneous snapshot to capture a beautiful moment has now become almost a kind of “science.” Only rarely is what we see on Instagram & Co. especially from young people and VIPs a spontaneously taken photo. Hardly anything is left to chance these days. Influencers and people with thousands of followers and fans are perfecting what was once known as a spontaneous self-portrait.

The perfect selfie staging involves careful styling, skillful posing, the optimal background and also the right look into the camera. A survey by the Personal Care and Detergent Industry Association found that 45 percent of girls only share one on social media after taking more than 50 pictures. Many adolescents thus have one goal: They want to become famous. They are looking for recognition – and for themselves.

Selfies often distort self-image

In general, there’s nothing wrong with taking a picture of yourself and making sure you look good in it. But the chosen picture from the more or less small selfie shoot is edited by many young people with filters and apps so that it looks the way they would like to look. However, this can result in a distorted self-image.

Optical deception through the selfie effect

When even the fiftieth photo doesn’t match one’s expectations, many teens begin to doubt themselves. The nose, which appears too large in the self-shot photos, is often described as a beauty deficit. However, in many cases this is an optical illusion. The selfie effect distorts the proportion of the nose due to the perspective. In a selfie, the nose comes relatively close to the wide-angle lens of the handheld camera – this results in a non-real enlargement of the nose. This creates a distorted self-image for many people, which can lead to the desire for a nose correction that is unjustified for this reason.

Often wrinkles also become the focus of dissatisfaction. After all, people who take a lot of photos of themselves and post them often look at their appearance with different eyes – especially at wrinkles. A survey conducted by the German Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery shows that more customers want to have such treatments and have them performed.

When a nose correction or wrinkle treatment is really necessary

Social media and selfies taken for this purpose thus often represent the impetus for a corresponding beauty treatment.

An injection with Botox or hyaluronic acid, wrinkle treatments with ultrasound or laser, as we offer them in our private practice for dermatology and aesthetics in Munich, should not be used so that you look better on a selfie – just to collect likes and positive comments. You should have wrinkle treatment performed only for yourself, to look younger and fresher, to feel comfortable in your own skin, for more self-confidence and to eliminate any feelings of shame.

Injections with Botox help with developing and pronounced expression lines, make the facial expression more positive if it is affected, for example, by transverse wrinkles on the forehead or a deep frown line between the eyebrows. Hyaluronic acid is suitable for restoring volume to sunken areas of the face and, for example, for filling nasolabial folds or lip wrinkles. With hyaluronic acid, we can also offer our patients a gentle form of nose correction. Depressions on the bridge of the nose, asymmetry, saddle nose, long nose or small indentations on the tip and bridge of the nose can be treated effectively and without surgery.

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