Spegel spegel på väggen där, säg mig vem som vackrast på sociala medier är?” : En kvalitativ studie om skönhetsfilter och skönhetsretuschering på sociala medier

Social media has become an integral part of the lives of many young people around the world, and has also brought new technical tools, partly in terms of the communication that takes place when publishing images. Researchers have recently become concerned about the potential negative impact that social media use can cause.This is based, among other things, on the fact that social media and its technology enable people to use applications that show a falseself-presentation. The technical means of socialmedia are mentioned to be increasingly accessible and attractive to use, as people want to show a more idealized version of them selves, which also communicate sa self-chosen "image". This is the basis of our willingness to carry out this study. The purpose of this study is to examine young adults's alientemotions, motivations, and relationship to socialmedia's impactonpeople's appearance, specifically through the use of beauty filters and beauty retouching on digital platforms. The results are drawn from three focusgroups with four participants in each focusgroup and three semistructured interviews with users of these social media tools. The focus groups and interviews have been recorded and transcribed and the material has then been analyzed to answer our researchquestions. The study's theoretical framework consists of impression management, gender, uses and gratification social comparison theory and cultivation theory. The results of this study shows that young adults' relation ship to different resources to modify appearance onlinec ould be analyzed based on their prominent emotions towards the use, the ideal that subsistson social media and their general thoughts and opinions about gender and digital beauty tools. The results also indicated that the motivation for using these digital beauty tools is based on satisfaction, belonging, entertainment and availability. Finally, the results showed that participating respondents who use or have used beauty filters and beauty retouching feel that these digital beauty tools had an impact on their ownself image and impression. Furthermore, did participants of the focusgroups perceive that these resources for modifying the appearance on social media contribute with an impact on an individual's self-image