Snapchat Dysmorphia has patients seeking cosmetic surgery to look like filtered versions of themselves instead with fuller lips, bigger eyes, or a thinner nose. This is an alarming trend because those filtered selfies often present an unattainable look and are blurring the lines of reality and fantasy for these patients.
00:00:00.000So have you heard about the hottest new mental disorder? It's the newest one on the market. You can go and pick it up at Target or Walmart if you want. It's called Snapchat dysmorphia. That's the newest one. Let me read a little bit from the story about it on the Daily Wire.
00:00:15.420It says plastic surgeons say more people are coming into their offices and asking if the doctors can make them look like they do in Snapchat. Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine's Department of Dermatology wrote previously patients would bring images of celebrities to their consultations to emulate their attractive features.
00:00:35.060A new phenomenon dubbed Snapchat dysmorphia has patients seeking out cosmetic surgery to look like filtered versions of themselves instead with fuller lips, bigger eyes, or a thinner nose.
00:00:48.560This is an alarming trend because those filtered selfies often present an unattainable look and are blurring the lines of reality and fantasy for these patients.
00:00:58.040Okay, so people are going in and they're asking for plastic surgery.
00:01:02.580There were some statistics about plastic surgery in this article. I'm trying to find them that were pretty disturbing.
00:01:08.960The Washington Post reports that in a 2017 survey, the American Academy of Facial, Plastic, and Reconstructive Surgery found that 55% of plastic surgeons said patients had requested surgery to look better on social media apps, up 13% from the previous year.
00:01:28.58055%, 55%, over half of the patients are going in and trying to permanently alter their bodies surgically just for the sake of social media.
00:01:41.880Now, this really isn't that complicated.
00:01:46.220And this is not a mental disorder either.
00:01:49.760You see how easily we come up with new mental disorders?
00:01:59.020And now we've got a new mental disorder on the books.
00:02:01.640If you're wondering how we end up with 300-some mental disorders in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, this is how we end up with it.
00:02:10.320Because it's just, you can just make them up.
00:02:36.200These are narcissists who are going to get plastic surgery.
00:02:42.480Mostly it's narcissists who get plastic surgery in the first place.
00:02:45.500But especially when they're getting it for the sake of social media, they're narcissists.
00:02:50.400Narcissism is when you take an excessive interest in yourself, especially your appearance, but not only that.
00:02:58.520I think we kind of have this misguided idea of narcissism where we think that, you know, a narcissist is somebody who thinks too highly of themselves, who has a—essentially we conflate arrogance and narcissism.
00:03:13.540And then on the flip side, we think that a humble person is someone who thinks lowly of themselves, someone who has a low opinion of themselves.
00:03:24.420And that's why we would—I think we often assume that if somebody is—has a bad self-image and so they're going to get plastic surgery, well, they couldn't possibly be a narcissist because they obviously think they have a poor opinion of their own appearance.
00:03:43.540A narcissist is someone who thinks about themselves too much.
00:03:47.640Whether those are good or bad opinions doesn't really matter.
00:03:53.120The point is they're spending way too much time thinking about themselves.
00:03:57.640Whereas someone who is humble is someone who just doesn't think about themselves that much.
00:04:03.780And when they do think about themselves, like a humble person—in fact, in order to be humble, you have to—part of humility is recognizing your gifts and your strengths and appreciating them and being grateful for them.
00:04:37.340And then they go on and they play the game, right?
00:04:39.280So, I think if you're—if you're obsessing all the time about your physical flaws or what you perceive your flaws to be, then you're a narcissist.
00:04:49.240And you're a narcissist because there's a whole world out there and there are billions of people.
00:04:55.540None of them—none of it has—none of them care about your physical flaws.
00:05:00.680Yet all you can do is just stare in the mirror and look at your nose that you think is too big or whatever.
00:05:07.240I think narcissism lies at the root of many alleged mental disorders.
00:05:12.960Many things that we consider mental disorders are really at root just narcissism, just self-obsession.
00:05:19.580And we kind of create that in ourselves because we spend way too much time in our culture thinking about ourselves.
00:05:26.760We spend entirely too much time looking inward, into ourselves, at ourselves.
00:05:33.280So, we like to think that, you know, in this culture we have so much anxiety, we have so much stress, we have so much more of it than people in the past must have had.
00:05:44.480And we talk as though we're the first generation to ever have self-image issues or issues with self-esteem or what have you.
00:07:03.520That it seems like every, you know, cosmetic company or, or, or whatever, any company that sells toiletry items, you know, this is, this is, this is, this is what they do now.
00:07:34.840You're encouraging people to think positively about themselves instead of negatively, but really you should be encouraging people to just stop thinking about themselves.
00:07:44.680It's, it's not about trying to shift your image of yourself so that it's all positive.
00:07:50.200It's just about just, it's just about getting away from yourself, not focusing on that.
00:07:55.540Instead of focusing so much on loving yourself, focus on a, on a, on a good book, focus on, put on some music, focus on that.
00:08:05.720Watch a documentary about, about dolphins.