TikTok’s new face filter is very realistic but could further enforce unhealthy beauty standards

Kay Brooks, a TikTok user, was shocked to look at her face when she used the new filter because she was almost unrecognizable. She made sure to show herself without the filter as well in the video. Many on the platform have been enjoying this new filter using the hashtags #boldglamourfilter and #teenagefilter. However, some critics state that this could be harmful to people's mental health and promote unrealistic beauty standards, as reported by GoodMorningAmerica.

"I didn't understand because nobody was showing what they looked like without this filter, but you need to see what I look like right now," Brooks said in the video, which went viral with more than 1.3 million views. Brooks later told GMA that she was astonished by the filter's effects. "It literally looked like my face had been photoshopped, like instantaneously, which for anyone who knows anything about Photoshop is insanely hard to do and takes a lot of time, so yeah, I was just astounded. I was like, 'This isn't real,'" Brooks said. Krissy Van, another TikTok user, believes the filter affected her positively. She posted a video of herself with a side-by-side view of what she looked like with and without the filter.

"I see my grandmother as a young girl," Van captioned it. "This is a beautiful filter that brought out some beautiful memories. 🥺❤️, she added." Van loved the #teenagefilter effect. "It was first shocking, honestly, because to be able to see something come from an image so quickly, for one, it's a little scary, but at the same time, I feel like it gives a lot of other people hope in some way," Van said. "My perspective was one way and others could look at it another way. And it's just ... I feel like it's a beautiful, beautiful thing personally."  

Not all TikTok users like the face filter. Erica Taylor used the filter in one of our videos and hated it. She said, "I don't know why I'm doing the work when I can just put this filter on and just pretend." "It's a whole lot of work for nothing. Nobody sees me anyway because that would be disappointing. That filter makes you feel very sad." The video is captioned, "This filter at 46." Therapists state that these filters can lead to psychological distress and mental health issues, which leads to poor body image perception in kids and teenagers. Even some adults are not immune to its bad effects. "We're giving a false sense of this is how people really look or could look like the reality," Fleming said, according to GMA.

"We're seeing people really fixated on how they look and comparing again to that filter," Fleming said. "It's gonna feed that negative self-talk that someone who's already struggling with self-image has in their head." People on Twitter also have been talking about the new TikTok face filter. Computational artist Memo Akten posted a thread about women trying out the "bold glamour" filter and warned his followers that it is a "psychological warfare and pure evil," as reported by Fox News. He tweeted, "I don't wanna be known as the TikTok filter guy, but ICYMI after attacking GenX w teenage filter, TikTok just dropped a new filter to take out Millennials & GenZ. ‘Beauty filters’ are not new, but the precision on this is beyond uncanny. This is psychological warfare and pure evil."

Another user, @Mar_G_3, commented, "I am so worried for middle and high school girls right now. Social media is hard enough to scroll through even for me and my friends my age."