The habit of capturing selfies is spreading like an epidemic in all nooks of the globe, and people irrespective of their age are quite interested in sharing their mini self-portraits on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. But now, a new study published in the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery has revealed that it is not a wise idea to analyze your facial appearance by just looking at the selfies.
According to the study, taking a selfie at a distance of about 12 inches from the face increases perceived nose size by nearly 30 percent, and thus you will not be able to see your actual self in these selfies. Researchers who took part in the study also warned patients not to entirely depend on selfies while making cosmetic treatment decisions.
It should be noted that 55 percent of patients who consulted facial surgeons in 2017 wanted to undergo cosmetic procedures just to improve their looks while taking selfies, statistics by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons reveal.
"Patients, people, even my family have to be aware that if you're taking a selfie, it's not really how you look. Selfies make your nose look wider and thicker when it really isn't, and people like a smaller nose. My fear is that the generation out there now doesn't know. All they know is the selfie," said Dr Boris Paskhover, a reconstructive surgeon at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and the lead author of the study, WQAD News 8 reports.
Dr Paskhover also added that distortion will happen in faces of people when the camera is kept quite close, and this flaw particularly occurs in your nose.
To prove this distortion, Paskhover and his team of researchers analyzed a mathematical model and tried to figure out how the distance between the camera and the face affects the facial features. The research found that when the lens is close to the face somewhere around 12 inches, the size of the nose gets increased by 30 percent.
As per the researchers, when the face is very close to the lens, the nose will be nearer when compared to the remaining parts of the face, and as a result, it will look larger. But when the person who is taking the selfie steps away from the camera, the relative distance between your nose and the rest of the face flattens, and thus the nose will appear more proportionate.
