How Picture Filters Are Filtering Our Lives

Breathtaking sunset view on the hillside! Picture it, Instagram it, make people believe it, and they would trust me that I witnessed this awesome scene. Oh! This filter would make it look more reddish brown and the sky a little too bright- and it’s done! A perfect sunset picture on Instagram! I assume how many likes this snapshot of nature’s beauty will get!

(Hold on! But with picture filters nature’s true beauty is marred, isn’t it?)

Sounds familiar? Isn’t it you every time you experience or observe extraordinarily amazing event? If this is not you, then congratulations! You are still an authentic self not immersed in the colorful Instagram filters. In this tech-advanced society, people are now becoming more dependent on the picture filters for their social interactions.

Where social networking sites have made it a lot simple medium to interact with our long-forgotten friends from another part of a country or even world, these have also made us self-obsessed, and insecure about our own curves and edges. You won’t even realize when you just become addicted to photo filters and editing just to look beautiful or cool photographer or even poser on social media.

Visually attractive selfies, and pictures on social media would maximize the photo engagement & social interaction. A vintage effect would give your picture an old theater look while you can make the food look yummier by saturating the picture or manipulating its colors. These filters act as the correction tools for the natural imperfection of your face & other bodily features. Apart from gaining popularity on Instagram or Facebook through this picture filters, people especially the youngsters do not understand that they are losing a major part of their self. These filters are actually filtering the authentic essentials from our lives.

• A picture without filters leads to social media exploit

The body shaming & skin color based discrimination is on boom today! The reason is obvious- the picture filters! If you haven’t whitened your skin tone, and didn’t hold your bloated belly in so that it doesn’t pop out, do not upload it on social media. You will be body-shamed & joked about with your darker skin. But yes, if you have done both of these using picture filters and other correction tools, you will be liked by people not only on social media but also in reality.

• Filters transformed the true meaning of “Sharing Happiness”

Social media sharing has become a medium of ‘sharing happiness digitally’. Instead of being ‘liked’ by the people around, everybody wants to get more than 100 ‘likes’ within an hour. Whether they are genuinely happy or not, they pretend on social media to be happy because this makes them feel charming & popular. They are going on a trip, they would snapshot & post it on social media with ravishing captions & exciting hashtags which would make it look a happy & delightful trip. Whether they have enjoyed it or not, that’s not of their concern.

Well, the saying goes perfect- “picture it or it didn’t happen”. If you have more than 100 likes, you have definitely shared your happiness with the friends!

• Filtered pictures give false presumptions of one’s self

10 different pictures filters would give birth to 10 different versions of yourself- the beautified versions! To be addicted to picture filters is to be weak! It means you do not accept yourself as who you are naturally. Your skin glow in the filtered picture would give you a true idea of yourself. You would yearn to get this skin glow in real failing which, you are prone to depression.

These picture filters fake the perfectionism in you. And if those are not fulfilled, you will be depressed- eternally. With filters, you can be very confident about you and your beauty on social media. As the number of likes increases, your popularity and the confidence increases but the self-esteem decreases. If you are unable to accept the way you are, the skin tone, and the body structure you have, you are not being respectful to your true self. Therefore, picture filters boost your self-confidence but lower your self-esteem.