The trend of posting "Instagram vs. Reality" photos has been around for a few years now as a response to idealized photographs and their possible effect on social media users who might feel they are not up to the "new standard." These honest photos became a breath of fresh air on the platform and showed the "imperfect" side of photos, which is much more relatable. If you want to see more humorous "Instagram vs. Reality" parodies, check out these women who are on top of their game here, here, and here.

Influencers have a lot of power when it comes to forming unrealistic beauty and lifestyle standards, but they often forget to balance out their content with a dash of reality, not realizing how it might affect their followers. But we at Bored Panda remember and have created a few posts exposing Instagram's fakest photos here and here to remind everyone to use social media with extreme caution.

Social media can be a great platform for self-expression and self-identity, but with millions of photos posted on Instagram every day, each one can contribute to how we perceive ourselves. If we start comparing our daily lives with shiny and utterly unrealistic images that are posted, it eventually affects our mental health, particularly on self-esteem and body image.

According to a survey by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) conducted of almost 1,500 young people from across the UK, Instagram scored as the most detrimental to young people’s mental health and wellbeing among other social media platforms and was associated with anxiety, depression, bullying, and the fear of missing out.

A 2019 study by Marika Tiggemann and Isabella Anderberg revealed that the "Instagram vs. reality" trend that shows idealized and more realistic depictions of the same person side-by-side makes a somewhat positive change: "exposure to the paired ‘Instagram vs reality’ and real images resulted in a decrease in body dissatisfaction, relative to exposure to the ideal images."

While some people like Geraldine West mock the flaws of social media by putting a humorous spin on it and creating parodies, others reveal how those "perfect" photos are made. We've previously shared a few posts that show the candid behind-the-scenes of pitch-perfect photos posted on social media, and it seems that glamorous and creative results can be achieved without a professional setting and a whole team of people. Check out these posts for some inspiration here, here, here, here, and here.