Photographer Asks Teens To Edit Their Pics Until They Look ‘Social Media Ready’, Posts The Alarming Results

Teenagers feel a lot of pressure to be and look a certain way. But to what extent? To find out, creative agency M&C Saatchi has partnered with the renowned British photographer Rankin and MTArt Agency. As part of VISUAL DIET, a campaign that explores the impact of beauty standards on mental health, they asked a group of teens to polish their selfies for social media.

“In the series ‘Selfie Harm‘ I was specifically looking and experimenting with the apps that are actually targeted at teenagers,” Rankin told Bored Panda. “They are like playing computer games and consequently are really good fun. I’ve personally enjoyed messing around with them but they are very addictive.”

Image credits: RankinPhotography

The project saw the renowned British photographer shoot a group of teens aged 13-19. They were then asked to spend a few minutes editing the photo until they thought it was good enough to match the Instagram trends. “Initially, we used models and then I wanted to expand it to other teenagers, so we did a call out looking for [more] subjects for the perfect selfie.”

“The program we used was one of many like Facetune <...> but there are hundreds of these apps,” the photographer added. “The main thing is that we weren’t casting people that used these apps, but found teenagers and asked them to try them out. They were shown how to use them, which literally takes seconds as they are very easy to work out, then they did the body image editing themselves.”

Rankin also believes that there is no sense checking around it. “What you can do on these apps is way beyond what photoshopped images. The technology is moving forward very quickly and the idea of being somebody in any way different from the person you are can be exciting, but what are the pitfalls around it. That’s what I’m asking. If you can be even just a ‘more polished’ version of yourself, how hard does it then become to accept who you actually are? This is a very bad influence for mental health and this project is only just scratching the surface of it.”

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Rankin: rankin.co.uk | Instagram | Facebook

M&C Saatchi: mcsaatchi.com | Facebook

MTArt Agency: mtart.agency | Facebook | Instagram

VISUAL DIET: visualdiet.co.uk | Instagram

Rokas is a writer at Bored Panda with a BA in Communication. After working for a sculptor, he fell in love with visual storytelling and enjoys covering everything from TV shows (any Sopranos fans out there?) to photography. Throughout his years in Bored Panda, over 300 million people have read the posts he's written, which is probably more than he could count to.

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What do you think ?

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CCL_2018 5 years ago

All the edited pictures look creepy

148points

Ash 5 years ago

agreed, like something out of a horror movie. No thanks, I like the originals.

40points

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Carrie de Luka 5 years ago

All the usual - make eyes look bigger, mouths look bigger, slim down the nose, make skin perfectly smooth and characterless. They all end up looking freaky. So much worse than their original selves. Sad.

13points

Amazon QT 5 years ago

Yep. That’s kinda like some of the stuff I had to do when I worked as a Graphic Designer for a famous candy company in Tacoma, Washington. For the Employee of the Month photos I was told to “pretty them up” by upper management since they were going to be displayed where everyone that came to the company could see them. They even had me remove neck tattoos from the guy that had gotten Employee of the Year. It cracked me up that they wanted me to do that. But the ones I did I never changed their skin tone or made them thinner in the face or moved their ears to make them not stick out.

4points