[MUSIC]
If you spend basically any time on
Instagram, you might not be seeing
exactly what you think you are.
Certainly not a reflection
of reality when it comes to some of
the way people are presenting
themselves thanks to the easy cheap
access to apps that can radically
make a person look different.
Joining us now is a reporter who's
done an amazing write up on
the sort of obsession that has
grown around one of these face tune
is a senior reporter Prof.
Post Jessalyn joins us once again.
Justin welcome as always.
>> Thank you so much for having me.
>> It's great to have you here.
So this face tune is apparently
popular, both in terms of how many
people are using it and also how
often certain people are using it.
Is that what you found?
>> Yeah, face tune has been
downloaded more than 160 million
times one to 1.5 million images are
exported from the app every day.
And I think a lot of people don't
realize how often they're looking
at face tuned selfies in their
Instagram and Facebook feeds.
Do we have any, I don't know that
it's possible to know but if I go
on mine, is there any way to know
is it likely that 10 or 20 or 30%
of them have been modified in some
way how widespread is it become?
>> There's no data that
we have right now.
But I talked to influence our
watchdogs who believe that
pretty much every single influencer
on Instagram female influencer
specifically is using face tune
except for the rare body positive
ones who go out of their way to
talk about why it's toxic.
But I can say from my experience I
know a lot of my friends use
Face tune.
I had no trouble finding sources of
young women to talk to who use
face tune seems to be as one woman
told me in the story.
It's almost like who doesn't use
Face tune at this point.
>> And so you go into some of the
psychology behind it, there seems
to be anxiety about presenting
an actual picture of yourself.
I assume that that anxiety probably
would be worse after a period of
using phase two and where all of
a sudden you would go from these
modified photos back to normal.
So it was that a common thread this
like fear, or
was it about getting more likes?
What are some of the reasons that
were cited for people to use them.
>> I think a lot of women who use
face tune start out maybe hearing
about it from a friend or
seeing someone talk about it and
they experiment with it.
And then they kind of become
addicted to how ideal or perfect
they can make themselves look and I
played around with that myself and
it is very tempting.
You can make your lips bigger your
hips bigger your way skinnier and
so it's it's difficult to be able
to create this perfect version of
yourself and then stop doing that
and Instagram specifically can
really reinforce that desire.
All the women I talked to said that
When they post a face tuned version
of themselves.
They get a lot more likes than the
non face tuned version of their of
themselves and as we know getting
likes is literally addictive.
>> So as I sort of suspected,
we are part of the problem
with this is happening.
You guys out there, you know what
you're doing but, yeah, so look,
I sort of get four influencers,
people whose influences that
they're very attractive or whatever
I get why they might do it.
But for regular people wouldn't it
be weird to do that and then you're
hanging out with your friends and
clearly.
You don't look like that were there
any concerns about real people in
their life, either noticing it or
having thoughts about the fact that
there's this wide gap between
the way they're presented and
their real natural,
perfectly fine face and body.
>> Yeah, lots of them and
I spoke to said they have fear of
being called a catfish or
looking unrecognizable in their
Instagram versus real life.
And that has pushed them to
consider going under the knife
getting plastic surgery so
they can make their face doing
fantasy a reality.
>> Yeah, and it's funny I was
reading I think randomly on Twitter
someone had his a couple weeks ago
they posted something from
a subreddit called ami,
the creep or something like that.
And it was about a girl whose
boyfriend had been posting photos
of them where she was edited,
where he had made her look
different in some different ways.
And that seems like a massive red
flag.
And then I saw in your article that
at least one of the women said it
was considered etiquette that if
you're going to edit yourself in
a photo that you would edit
the other people too.
Was that a common thing that you
would make your friends or family
members more attractive as well?
>> Yeah, it was and
that was surprising and
kind of disturbing to me too.
But they're the women I talked
to said that even like they it's so
common that they will have group
chats where they will send these
teen selfies to their friends
to ensure it doesn't look to edit
it because you don't want anyone to
know it's edited.
It's supposed to look
naturally flawless.
But yeah, the unspoken rule,
I guess is that if you're going to
enhance yourself in a picture and
other people are in that photo as
well, you as a courtesy you have to
enhance their image as well.
It's very toxic.
>> That's amazing.
Well, look, I only basically post
photos of myself, maybe my dog
I want all viewers to know.
That's actually what my
dog looks like.
Is that cute naturally.
Now as part of this investigation
you as we said, you've talked to
a lot of people, you also had some
of them face to your photos.
Why did you choose to do that?
>> I wanted to see what perfect
looked like to all of these
women on the same face and body.
I'd seen photos for
each of them of how
they tweaked themselves to look but
I thought it would be helpful to
look at all the different versions
of perfection on one person.
And it was pretty staggering.
I looked different in every
single photo.
Everything about me was changed,
nothing went untouched.
Some women made me curvier,
some women made me skinnier,
gave me a whole new face.
And it was really it was weird.
It was really interesting but
they showed me a lot more grace
than they showed themselves from
what I could tell.
Is that the the fact that they they
made such different changes I don't
know is that almost like a silver
lining that everybody's pursuing
perfection but at the very least.
We don't all think it's the same
thing that it can come in different
forms, even if none of those forms
are really available outside
of plastic surgery or face tuning.
>> I hope so.
I mean, there were definitely some
consistencies.
I know like the Instagram hourglass
figure is something I saw a bunch
of them trying to replicate on my
photo, but it was definitely nice
to see that I didn't look like
a clone and every photo.
>> That is certainly good.
Well, everyone, there's a lot more
to it available at huffpost inside
the face to an epidemic.
You can get a lot more out of
Justin's interviews with these
different influencers as always,
when you come on the show.
I learned a little bit about what's
going on out there and
get a little bit concerned about
some of the implications.
But thank you very much for
your work and joining us.
>> Thanks so much, John.
[MUSIC]