Reality is bound to be jarring when no photo can be imperfect

As I type this, I am being watched by a younger, prettier version of myself. Her face is reminiscent of mine, and she mirrors all my movements, but my jowly edges have been carved off to create a perfect heart shape, tapering into a dainty chin.

There is a girlish blush on her smooth, soft-focus cheeks. Her thick-lashed eyes are bigger than mine, and they sparkle like wet pebbles. She really is quite lovely; I could gaze at her all day, turning my face from side to side to admire her clean profile, and tossing my hair to see it fall in glossy folds on to her shoulders.

This, according to the photo filter menu of the social media platform Snapchat, is “My Twin”. She’s a sort of Picture of Dorian Grey in reverse: while I grow old and raddled and liver-spotted, My Twin lives on inside my smartphone, ageless, flawless, immortal.

What do photo filters like this – software that can alter images in myriad ways for upload to social media – do to our self-esteem? Are they just a bit of “playful” fun, as one tech executive told a Commons select committee this week? Or are they, as Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-addy argued, contributing to a crisis of mental illness and bodydysmorphia among the young?

It would be bizarre, frankly, if they weren’t. Never in human history have children grown up looking at themselves so often, so closely or so critically. When I was a teenager, in the Eighties, it was really quite hard to know what you looked like. Vanity was still considered, if not quite sinful, at least rather shameful.

Looking in the mirror was something one did furtively, ready to adopt an ironic expression in the event of discovery. There were no selfies, of course: cameras pointed outwards in those days. Once or twice a year, when your parents got the holiday snaps developed, you would get a glimpse of how you must look to the rest of the world. But the rest of the time, a merciful vagueness prevailed.

Pretty much every teenager in this country now has a cameraphone. Nine out of 10 regularly use social media apps such as Snapchat, Instagram or Tiktok, which come with built-in selfie filters. It isn’t enough to live in a visual culture of selfobjectification–the objectified self must be constantly improved.

Even “fun” filters – which put, say, dog ears on your head – automatically smooth out your complexion and give you giant Disney eyes. Then there are paid-for apps, such as the hugely popular Facetune, which allow you to airbrush your face exactly the way you want it.

But when it’s this easy to be beautiful on screen – or at least, to conform to a bland, cartoonish idea of beauty – reality is bound to be jarring. In recent years, plastic surgeons have warned of a huge rise in patients asking to have their faces changed to match their digitally altered image. “Snapchat dysphoria”, they call it.

Even I can feel it, after my first and only experiment with a filter. When I flick off the My Twin filter, and my real face suddenly fills the screen, I am appalled by the sight of myself. Is this what I look like to other people – this mottled slab of wind-dried meat?

I had no idea I had so many imperfections, until Snapchat offered to hide them.