Commentary on: The Zoom Effect: Exploring the Impact of Video Calling on Appearance Dissatisfaction and Interest in Aesthetic Treatment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“Body image” is central to the desire to seek aesthetic surgery as well as its perceived outcome.¹ Schilder, who formulated the concept of “body image,” described it as “the picture of our own body which we form in our own mind.” ² With the implementation of quarantine and distancing measures aimed to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a meteoric rise in traffic on videoconferencing platforms. Zoom alone reported a 33-fold increase with now more than 3.3 trillion annual meeting minutes.³ It is fair to wonder how the development of body image will be affected by all that time spent looking at our own image.

Here, the authors provide an excellent study examining the effects of videoconferencing on self-perception and the desire to seek aesthetic surgery. In this well-designed study, a survey was distributed to participants regarding videoconferencing usage and behaviors. The survey also included the Dysmorphic Concern Questionnaire (DCQ) and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale as surrogates for understanding self-perception. Finally, respondent interest in seeking various aesthetic treatments was evaluated.

Interestingly, the authors identified that 42.4% of respondents reported new concerns about their appearance attributable to videoconferencing.⁴ Extrapolated over the number of people who have begun or increased usage of videoconferencing, this represents an astounding proportion of the general population. The authors then further elaborated this finding through linear regression analysis, demonstrating that new appearance concerns also predicted respondents’ interest in aesthetic treatments, including nonsurgical cosmetic treatment and grooming.

A concerning finding of this study, however, is that new appearance concerns were also strongly correlated with increased scores on the DCQ, a validated instrument for assessing the presence of dysmorphia.⁵ Along with additional predictive factors, including fixation on one’s own face and video-manipulation behaviors, this predicted more than one-third of the variance in observed DCQ scores. These findings support that some patients with a newfound interest in aesthetic treatments may also be at risk for dysmorphia. Thus, the authors reinforced the importance of a thorough evaluation of each patient’s motivations prior to surgery.

This work sheds light on an important current topic in aesthetic surgery—the rise of videoconferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. I applaud the authors for providing a robust analysis of the effects of videoconferencing on self-perception and how it may affect patients’ desire to seek aesthetic surgery in the future.

Disclosures

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

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