Columbia, SC (WLTX) - Could filters on selfies cause body image issues? Plastic surgeons believe it can.
The trend was noticed in the 2017 American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery survey, where 55 percent of surgeons reported seeing patients who requested surgery to improve their appearance in selfies, up from 42 percent in 2015.
"Patients will come in, they'll Snapchat, they'll make perfect skin, or they'll make a nose that's so much thinner that it wouldn't be a nose that you could breath through," says Dr. Oliver Simmons, plastic surgeon. "You have to realign their looks on a screen with what can be attained in real life."
Dr. Simmons says body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is becoming more common as people are taking more pictures of themselves and can obsess over small details.
University of South Carolina juniors Anastasia Manakova, Taylor Marcotte and Nicole Saad say they use filters on Snapchat and Instagram just for fun, but they understand how it can affect some people.
"I'm only putting this filter to send to my friend," says Manakova. "I'm not really trying to look like something that I'm not."
"It makes a lot of girls, or anybody really feel as if that's how they're supposed to look," says Marcotte. "In that sense, I can see why people want to look like that all of the time."
"The brain is so powerful that it can distort what you see in the mirror," says Saad.
Dr. Simmons says he doesn't want to fuel anyone who is suffering from BDD.
"I have to realize that this person has a fixation that's abnormal, before I fix a normal person with a small abnormality."