Is social media putting pressure on the youth to alter their appearance?

I think it's more than just the young. Snapchat filters and the use of lighting and angles can allow anyone to present a perfected and curated version of themselves to the word. But for the young there is also a reative and fun side to this. being able to try different looks, play with make up, pick up and put down different styles, can be quite liberating.

However, age comes to us all. And alongside this the algorithms of online advertising target those who are entering different stages of aging with adverts for ways to avoid baldness, prevent wrinkles, whiten teeth and so on and so on.

Previous generations have faced unrealistic body images foist on them by magazines, TV, movies and so on. However, this is the first generation who get to mediate their own body image, possibly making the message stronger. If young people portray themselves in selfies just the way they feel they should look based on magazines, this only intensifies the message of body image from the mainstream media. However this self mediation also allows young people to hack into what is seen as appropriate, creating different standards of beauty and seeing if their friends andd followers on social media pic up the cues and follow them, or adapt their ideas, to face up against the traditional images of how we should look thrown at us by the mainstream media.

There has long been a desire form advertsing to give us insecurities to create opportunities to sell us product. The phrase 'body odour' is not medical in origin but comes from advertising, an attempt to embarrass people into fearing that they mght smell unpleasant so that they buy an advertiser's product. With modern media we have the opportunity as creators and mediators of our own image to intensify such images, or to fight against them.