Healing Space | Zoom dysmorphia: How overusing your filter is harming you

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

Too much videoconferencing for over a year-and-a-half has put you on screen, spotlighted you when you speak, and relayed your image back to you relentlessly throughout the session, often throughout the day. At some point you may have caught sight of yourself slouching, adjusted your clothes or hair and told yourself you need to lose or gain weight, or change the angle at which the camera captures you. For some web session attendees, however, it’s become more than a passing thought. New research published in the International Journal of Women’s Dermatology (August 2021) suggests that the 3 trillion hours we spent online in 2020 are giving rise to anxiety about returning to offline activities that centre around personal appearance in about 70% of respondents and leading to body dysmorphic disorder.

What’s happening is that social media and videoconferencing offer you the use of filters to readily adjust your appearance or your background. This reinforces the belief that how you appear in real life, sans filter, is just not good enough. This is resulting in an erosion of self-esteem. Whereas earlier you may have used a filter once in a while to glam up an Insta-post or on Facebook in a more playful manner, now in the pandemic era, it has become your default mode for all routine or professional presentations. Along with normalising the filter, you are normalising apologising for how you and your environment really look.

This developing mindset has been particularly hard on teens and women, who have begun to consider cosmetic procedures they would not have earlier. The pandemic has already seen a rise in eating and sleep disorders, substance abuse, and an overall rise in anxiety and general mental health issues. This dysmorphia is increasing habits like purchasing or changing clothes, touching up the face with make-up, adjusting lighting and angles. While easing of restrictions to some extent helps those suffering as they resume social contact, begin to regain family and social support systems, with Zoom dysmorphia, the anxiety is likely to rise as people socialise again.