Avaliação da influência das redes sociais na busca por procedimentos estéticos faciais

Abstract

According to recent studies published by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the number of facial aesthetic procedures is increasing every year, and this fact may be directly related to the popularity of selfies and digital media. It is clear that social networks are fully integrated into people's daily lives, and these platforms based on the publication of images have caused their users to take a more critical look, initially at the angle of the photo, and today, at the details of the face itself. The dissatisfaction with one's image and the need to achieve the standard of beauty of social networks may be favoring the increase in the search for facial aesthetic procedures and thus contributing to the change in the aesthetic perception of individuals. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the influence of social networks on the search for facial aesthetic procedures. This research is characterized as a cross-sectional descriptive study and was conducted through a survey in the databases of the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery and the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. In addition, an analysis of Instagram and Facebook was performed through the Statista Online Statistics Portal and DataReportal, to assess the growth of users of these social networks between the years 2014 and 2020. Also with the help of the Google Trends platform, a search for terms directly related to our research was conducted, so that we could verify the popularity of these terms in certain periods. Concerning social networks, a constant and progressive increase of users was noticed in recent years, such as Instagram, which in 2014 had 200 million active users and 2018 reached the 1 billion mark. When it comes to the numbers of facial aesthetic procedures and searches on Google Trends, a growth is noted in certain periods, for example, the number of facial procedures performed in Brazil almost doubled from 2014 to 2019, being this, the year that had more aesthetic procedures performed in the country and in the world. By means of a statistical program, an analysis was carried out so that we could observe the existing relationship between the amount of facial aesthetic procedures performed from 2014 to 2020 and the search for procedures on Gtrends, worldwide and in Brazil. After the analysis, it was found that about the worldwide data there is a strong positive correlation between the elements, but not significant, and concerning the data from Brazil, it was realized that there is a weak positive correlation, but also not significant. Thus, it is concluded that although there is a relationship between these variables, it is not significant to the point of stating that one depends on the other or that they grow in the same proportion, i.e., we cannot ensure that the number of procedures grows to the same extent as the increase in the search on social networks and the search for terms on the Internet.