The days of striving to look like your favorite celebrity are over, replaced with none other than...the selfie.
"A day doesn`t go by where a patient comes in, `Hey doc, look at this seflie I took Friday night while I was out," said Dr. Scott Gayner, a facial plastic surgeon in Harrisburg.
From Snapchat to Instagram to even just your regular cell phone camera, you can become a cute dog, dress up for a music festival, or get glowing skin...all with the click of a button.
"Why choose to use this filter instead of a normal photo?" Fox 43 asked some young women at the mall.
"It makes you look prettier. Your skin is better. Your eyes are bigger. Your teeth are whiter," they responded.
And if you can look like that in a picture, you should be able to look like that in real life, right?
If only it were that easy.
"Now they`ve got their own face and with a few swipes of the filters, they see the nose looks better, the eyes look better, the neck looks better. And we have a hard time managing those expectations," said Dr. Gayner.
Expectations researchers are calling 'snapchat dysmorphia."
Research done at Boston University Medical Center reveals more people than ever before are going to plastic surgeons, expecting to leave looking like their favorite filter.
Dr. Gayner says he is seeing this in his own practice.
"They can`t understand, necessarily, why a surgeon can`t take their nose that they cropped or morphed in a certain way, sometimes we can, sometimes we can`t," said Dr. Gayner.
And while for some it might just a game...
"If I`m sending it to my friends, it`s usually the silliest. The ones that just look weird that I know we can both laugh about at the end," said another young woman.
For others, it can become much more serious.
"I know that the belief has been there for a while, the belief of our society on beauty. And the technological advances make it easier to hyperfocus on that," said Ann Lavin, manager of child and adolescent services at Wellspan Philhaven.
Lavin says social media isn`t a cause of dysmorphia, but it can definitely be a factor.
"We are seeing more of a self consciousness about appearance and wanting to compare themselves to others and just feeling not good enough," said Lavin.
Lavin defines dysmorphia as a hatred of a specific body part, to the point where a person removes themselves from everyday life.
Dr. Gayner says the patients he has worked with, for the most part aren`t quite that extreme, but many of them do want changes, and he says it`s his job to might sure they want them for the right reasons.
"Even though I`m a facial plastic surgeon, I do play budding psychiatrist a good percent of the time to make sure patients have the right motivation, and then ultimately as a surgeon, can I make the anatomic changes they`re looking for?" said Dr. Gayner.
Here`s the bigger picture— from the mirror, yo your cell phone, to a video camera for the news— through a lens or reflection, other factors such as lighting and focal length come into play, so you see is never an exact representation of what you really look like.
And keep in mind, that`s the exact point of a filter...
So have fun, and say cheese!