People Who Used Instagram for Years Were More Likely to Be Fooled a Stranger’s Face Was Their Own in Bizarre VR Experiment

A new study suggests Instagram may shape not just how people judge their looks but how their brains decide what counts as their own face

Instagram use may affect more than body image, according to a new study. It may also be linked to how readily people recognize a face as their own.

In a small virtual reality study of 95 young adults, researchers found that people who had used Instagram for a couple of years were more likely to feel that a stranger’s face belonged to them during a controlled body-illusion experiment.

While you’re in danger of losing your sense of self from using Instagram, this intriguing experiment raises a more subtle concern: long-term exposure to selfies, filters and image-centered social media may be associated with changes in the way the brain draws the boundary between self and others.

Researchers call this idea the “Digital Erosion of Bodily Identity Hypothesis.” It suggests that years of seeing, editing and comparing faces online may make facial identity slightly more flexible, especially on platforms where digital filters and beauty norms can make faces look more alike.

A Stranger’s Face in Virtual Reality

Researchers led by Maria Sansoni and Giuseppe Riva of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan recruited 95 young adults, with an average age of 26. Most had spent much of their adult lives on Instagram: on average, they reported 7.7 years on the platform and about an hour a day of use. Only 12 said they used beauty filters.

Participants filled out questionnaires about body image, distress and Instagram use. They also completed a heartbeat-counting task, a common test of interoception, or how accurately people sense signals from inside the body.

Then came the illusions. In one test, participants watched a gender-matched face in virtual reality while an experimenter stroked the onscreen cheek and the participant’s real cheek with a soft brush. When the touches happened at the same time, the illusion could make the stranger’s face feel more self-like. In another test, participants viewed a virtual body while synchronized touches were applied to their abdomen.

Such illusions are cousins of the famous rubber hand illusion, in which a person can begin to feel that a fake hand is their own. It’s a truly bizarre but convincing shift in perception that is accompanied by a sense of disowning their real hand. Scientists use these tricks as probes of bodily identity.

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What Instagram Did and Did Not Predict

Years of Instagram use predicted stronger feelings of ownership and self-location toward the virtual face, although daily minutes on Instagram did not.

According to the Digital Erosion of Bodily Identity Hypothesis, years of looking at, editing, comparing and presenting faces online might make facial identity more malleable, especially in environments where beauty filters and algorithmic aesthetics push faces toward similar ideals.

“It is through our faces that we recognize ourselves in the mirror, construct our individuality, and are recognized by others. In other words, the association does not emerge in any bodily representation, but precisely in the part of the body most closely linked to the sense of who we are,” said Professor Riva.

Participants who reported using filters felt more agency over the virtual body. But because only 12 people in the study used beauty filters, that result should be treated as exploratory.

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These findings, for now, need to be taken with a grain of salt. The study was small, cross-sectional and the participants were mostly White, European and university-educated. It excluded people with several psychological or medical conditions by self-report. The face and full-body illusions also used different designs, which makes them hard to compare directly.

The authors say future studies should follow people over time, include adolescents and test more diverse groups. Adolescence may be especially important because that’s when identity is still forming. Dr. Sansoni noted that the study’s young adults were the first generation to grow up with social media, beginning in late adolescence and integrating it into daily life for nearly a decade.

The findings were published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.