Photo Editing Makes People Distrust Social Media, Dating Sites, Report Says

A new survey done by image authenticity app TRUEPIC revealed Thursday said 93 percent of Americans believe that online photos have been edited.

Over the past two decades, content has become more visually available and more people follow visual content such as images and videos.

At the same time, it is also a fact many, if not most, of the photos posted online have been subjected to some level of editing.

On social media and dating sites, this might have been done for making a person appear more visually attractive and vibrant and engaging to the other people. But it seems to be having the opposite effect.

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“People are both overwhelmingly editing photos prior to sharing online, and also highly suspect of photos that are shared by others, which could cause distrust between consumers and the online businesses they frequent,” Jeff McGregor, CEO of TRUEPIC, stated Thursday.

Harris Poll conducted the survey among 2,133 adults of ages 18 and older from March 7-9.

It found 64 percent of Americans had edited a photo before posting it online. Not just that. This also makes users distrust social media and even dating sites the survey finds.

It also found millennials are more trusting of such images than older people. Around two-thirds of people above the age of 45 distrust images posted on dating sites. This number drops to around half for people in the 18-34 age group.

The lack of reliability of photos posted online also emerges from users’ own practices — around 46 percent of the respondents said they had edited the photos to enhance their overall quality, while 25 percent said they had edited photos to hide any imperfections such as blemishes, dark circles etc.

Around 15 percent of the respondents openly admitted they had edited photos to feel better about themselves.

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While photo editing might sound fairly commonplace for most people, it also creates trust issues and confuses the user.

A major fallout of such practices was the regular use of the term ‘fake news’ by President Donald Trump during his campaign. He alleged news outlets were spreading false news about him to discredit his candidacy. This led to a huge campaign against fake news by tech giants Facebook and Google.

According to a report on The Irish Times, the idea of fake news is destroying transparency on the internet.

According to Frank Pasquale, professor of law at the University of Maryland, this has led to the battering of notions of the internet being a public sphere with openness and freedom. Instead, its abuse has left people suspicious of everything they see online.

“We were told the internet would empower everyone and reduce the dominance of mainstream media…It promised openness, but lets influence go unchecked and unmonitored,” he was quoted by The Irish Times on Thursday.