It turns out that applications that allow you to change their appearance are very popular among very young users. And even virtual plastic surgery. And this alarms the experts.
Cute faces in Snapchat, cute big-eyed young ladies after processing in Meitu, incredible make-up made right on your smartphone … Why is it so bad? But researchers from the University of Manchester believe that everyone.
The Bioethics Council urged to mercilessly burn all applications and online games that allow you to change your appearance with a red hot iron from social networks. According to experts, children are the main consumers of such applications.
“We were shocked when we realized that make-up and plastic surgery apps were targeting girls as young as eight to ten,” says Jeanette Edwards, professor of social anthropology at the University of Manchester who led the study.
All of these applications are an opportunity. And the reason that prompts girls to virtually change their appearance is advertising and gloss.
“Social media has relentlessly promoted unrealistic and often discriminatory ideas about how people should look, especially girls and women.” You can’t argue with the professor here.
Specialists are especially alarmed by the toy “Plastic Surgeon” and its numerous clones. It allows you to change your appearance – both face and body. There are other applications that offer to make a beauty out of a monster using the same plastic. In the role of a monster – a girl with crooked teeth and overweight. And it is worth sending her under the knife, as soon as a beauty turns out.
“And all this is for the sake of likes! People are sure that beauty will bring them happiness, make them successful, ”laments Jeanette Edwards.
And also celebrities. The same Kylie Jenner, the sister of Kim Kardashian, does not hide the fact that by the age of 19 she had pretty much redrawn her appearance. But she’s successful. And, as it seems from the outside, without putting any effort into it. As a result, according to experts, children almost from the cradle begin to dream of plastic in order to get closer to their ideal. From here it is already a stone’s throw to neuroses, bulimia with anorexia and other misfortunes. And it would seem, just cute faces.
Another view
Natalia Gabovskaya, editor of the “Children” column:
– I’ll make a reservation right away – I have a child, a teenage daughter. And I think the tantrum around social media is entirely far-fetched. “Blue whale”? Yes, pardon me, not a single child who has everything in order at home will throw himself off the roof at 4:20, because someone is “zombifying” him there. A child who, from childhood, is quite sincerely told that he is beautiful, wonderful and wonderful, will not dream of cutting off or building up something. Or maybe you don’t explain to children what social networks are and what creatures inhabit them? Can’t you explain that a doll is just a doll and not a role model?
You can destroy the beauty industry, making it an industry of a rich inner world. And you can teach your little person to believe in yourself and love yourself. Or maybe we want to destroy the desire in children to become better, stronger, more beautiful? You can try to exclude all possible and impossible dangers from the outside world. And you can teach to recognize them and resist them. Or do we want to grow a greenhouse plant that will be blown away by the first breeze?
Children will inevitably face the outside world, with its standards of beauty and success. And whether they develop a neurosis at the sight of all these ideals or not depends only on ourselves.
And applications – God bless them. Better a virtual make-up than my own makeup, smeared wherever possible.