Living with filter fatigue

It starts innocently enough—a swipe here, a tweak there, just a little skin smoothing, a pop of color, a warm glow to make the moment feel more magical. Filters once promised a way to make our worlds prettier, brighter, and a little more 'us'—or at least the version we wanted others to see. But behind the shimmer and polish, many now carry an invisible weight: the silent fatigue of constantly questioning, 'Am I enough?'

"Sometimes it just blurs the image—and the real me too," says Eeshika, a professional from Gurgaon, reflecting on her trip to Udaipur. Despite the lake's natural beauty, she found herself endlessly switching filters to match her Instagram aesthetic, not to improve the view, but to fit in. "Somewhere, we're made to feel that perfect matters more than real," she admits.

What is filter fatigue?

Filter fatigue refers to the emotional exhaustion that arises from constantly editing and curating one's appearance online. It creates self-doubt and pressure to conform to idealized beauty standards, leading to anxiety and burnout.

Meghna Banerjee, a counseling psychologist and habit coach at Alyve Health, explains that filter fatigue creates subtle but profound self-doubt. "You begin to question not just your appearance but your worth," she says. The numbers back this up. A 2024 Hootsuite study shows that users are 68% more likely to trust and engage with unfiltered content. Yet creators feel intense pressure to maintain a polished image because social media algorithms reward the curated over the candid. Despite knowing better, many influencers and casual users alike find themselves trapped: loving the filter, hating the consequence.

"I've always had a love-hate relationship with filters," admits Mridula Kaplish, 30, from Delhi. "I never liked them much growing up, but once Snapchat and Instagram took over, it felt impossible not to get pulled in."