Cause-Effect Analysis: Photo Editing

Student’s Name Course Instructor Date Cause-Effect Analysis Photo editing and manipulation have led to a decrease in trust given to photographs. Magazines, social media, books and scientific journals are full of forged images, which are now used with an increasing frequency. This growing trend has consequently led to a lack of trust in the photographs, since it is not easy to differentiate real images from the digitally manipulated ones. For this reason, it has thus become necessary to look into the causes of the increased editing and manipulating of digital photographs and the effects that these actions have. Generally, individuals revert to photo manipulation to increase their confidence levels and to meet the standards of beauty set by technology, even though the same action is associated with an increase in plastic surgeries and altering memories of actual political or life events. The practice of editing and manipulating digital photographs is on the rise because it helps in increasing the level of confidence in the people using it. Speaking about her motivation for manipulating her photographs, Odell says, “Once I saw how easy and satisfying it was to polish my image… I downloaded more apps,” (Odell). Notably, Odell admits that she was dissatisfied with the way she looked and was not confident enough to post her image on social media. However, after seeing what the beauty apps did to her friend’s images, she saw an opportunity for herself. Like many media users and especially females, Odell found herself using the apps to manipulate her image to her liking since it made her look the way she wanted. The fact that she finally posted the photo on the online site proves that indeed her confidence had increased greatly because of editing and manipulating her photograph. Accordingly, more than 40 million people use beauty apps such as FaceTune in order to boost their confidence levels (Odell). Most users like Odell get themselves engaged in this because of their other friends who post heavily edited and seemingly perfect images on social media. The positive reviews and comments that often follow these forged images are associated with making one more confident about themselves, hence explaining why many people are increasingly using the beauty apps. Closely related to the confidence issue, the need to meet the beauty standards set by technology has also caused the increased frequency in photo editing and manipulation. According to Odell, “Technology has set a new standard for beauty that quite literally does not exist in real life… we have embraced it,” (Odell). Technology, through social media, has enabled people to show the world flawless skin and body by using Photoshop and airbrushing when in actual sense, they are nothing close to what they portray. Even though most people know this fact, society still accepts it as being part of life and uses it as a measure of what real life should be. People now believe that any image has to be retouched in order for it to be considered beautiful and accepted by others. The article gives an example of models whose images are often retouched heavily in order to get the perfect one that is similar or close to what society has come to know as being beautiful according to media s...