When Kylie Jenner famously admitted that her signature pout was the result of lip fillers, a significant spike occurred online in interest in and uptake of the cosmetic procedure. That is the power of social media.
A recent study by the University of South Australia (UniSA) found that young women who regularly engage with social media were excessively self-judgemental and more likely to consider cosmetic surgery.
The study of 238 young Australian women (aged 18-29) also identified that 16 per cent of women had already had cosmetic surgery and that more than half (54 per cent) would consider having it in the future.
Less than a third (31 per cent) said that they would not undertake surgical cosmetic procedures.
From 2010 to 2018, cosmetic procedures and surgeries almost doubled from 117,000 to more than 225,000. Today, almost seven million Australians (38% of the adult population) are considering cosmetic surgery in the next 10 years.
“The prevalence of body dissatisfaction among young women has long been a pervasive issue, with social media promoting unattainable beauty standards,” says UniSA researcher Lauren Conboy.
“In Australia, young adults are among the greatest users of social networking sites, so their exposure to unrealistic body ideals is high.
“In this study, we investigated how self-compassion might alter this relationship so that we can understand what we can do to influence positive psychosocial wellbeing,” says Conboy.
“Self-compassion is a about accepting flaws with neutrality. When we have positive self-compassion, we are kinder and more understanding towards ourselves; but when we have negative self-compassion, we tend to overestimate and criticise our flaws.
“Our study found that cosmetic procedures were well accepted among young women, and that a higher use of social media correlated with a higher acceptance of cosmetic surgery,” she says.
“Specifically, we found that young women who over-identify with personal attributes that they believe are not attractive are more likely to feel bad about themselves and, despite recognising this, can’t seem to break away from these negative thoughts.
“Over-identification was the most important predictor of positive attitudes towards cosmetic surgery.”
Co-researcher, Dr John Mingoia, says more must be done to help young women from striving for unrealistic and potentially harmful body images as portrayed on social media.
“Social networking sites are clearly a pervasive mode of comparison and body dissatisfaction for young women; however, due to their extreme popularity, they present an opportune platform to disseminate messages that may counter potentially harmful appearance-related content,” Mingoia says.
The most preferred social networking sites were Instagram (34.03 per cent) and TikTok (28.15 per cent).
“Research tells us that even after women get a cosmetic procedure, less than 40 per cent are satisfied with their bodies post-surgery.
“Clinicians need to test and confirm the psychosocial safety of young women who are possibly influenced by media representations of beauty, before they go ‘under the knife’,” he says.
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