From 14 January 2025, Instagram will say goodbye to beauty filters created by external developers. This move, announced by Meta, Instagram’s parent company, marks a significant shift in the landscape of social platforms.
Be careful not to distort the news: this does not mean that they will disappear completely. Beauty filters will continue to be available, which allow you to smooth your skin, enlarge your eyes or enhance your lips, exclusively developed internally by Half.
Augmented reality (AR) effects created by third parties they will be decommissionedalong with the Meta Spark platform, which has so far allowed creators and brands to produce custom filters. The decision to eliminate these external filters was motivated by growing concern about psychological effects that these tools can have, especially on young people.
Beauty filters have been accused of promoting unattainable beauty standards, contributing to disorders such as body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression. The phenomenon of “perfect faces” on social media has led many users, especially among the younger ones, to lose control of their image and develop a distorted self-perception of their body.
There could also be economic interests behind it
Meta stated that this choice was made later an in-depth analysis of the effects of these filters and their psychological implications. However there is also an economic aspect that cannot be ignored. The decision may be influenced by company’s push towards artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality tools developed internally.
Starting from April, in fact, Meta has decided to invest billions of dollars in AI and pushing users to use its own AR tools could prove advantageous both for control of the platform and for long-term economic interests.
Going back to deleting filters, some will remain approximately 140 availablea small number compared to the vast range that has populated Instagram to date. This change may not completely solve the problem, as users could still bypass the restrictions by using unofficial filters.
In short, although Meta’s intent seems oriented towards improving the user experience and fits into a broader context of growing attention to the issues of mental health and online authenticity, it remains to be seen whether this removal will have a lasting impact on online behavior or will it have just been a strategic move.
