Instagram usage can not only affect how we view our bodies, but also how our brains perceive the bodies we inhabit as “our own.” In short, it can erode our sense of self, leaving us unable to recognize ourselves or feel ‘comfortable’ in our own bodies.
This is a scientific research proposal published in the international journal “Computers in Human Behavior” and carried out by a team of researchers coordinated by Professor Giuseppe Riva, Director of the Institute of Humanitarian Technology at the University of the Sacro Cuore in Milan. The study, led by Dr. Maria Sansoni, posits the digital erosion of physical identity hypothesis. The idea is that years of exposure to selfies, filtered faces, and digital representations of self can gradually blur the perceptual boundaries that allow us to recognize our faces as unique. In other words, after years of living in a digital world where all faces tend to look more and more like each other, we risk becoming even more difficult to remember what makes us unique.
background
The mental health of adolescents and young adults is one of today’s major public health challenges. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 1 in 7 adolescents and 1 in 8 adults worldwide have a mental disorder. Among the most concerning factors are those related to body and self-image. In a culture where physical appearance is increasingly valued, physical appearance plays an increasingly important role in building personal identity and relationships with others. It is therefore no surprise that today body dissatisfaction is associated with decreased psychological well-being and is a significant risk factor for eating disorders, depression, social anxiety, and low self-esteem.
In recent years, scientific debate has mainly focused on the role of social media. Platforms like Instagram have turned the body into a primary tool for communication and self-expression. In these digital environments, faces and appearances are constantly modified through exposure, observation, comparison, filters, and evaluated through likes, comments, and metrics of visibility. Constant comparison to idealized images and often unrealistic beauty standards increases pressure on one’s appearance, leading to increased body dissatisfaction as well as critical evaluation of one’s body.
But what if the problem were even more serious? The risk is that social media is not only influencing the way we evaluate our bodies, but also the way we construct a sense of who we are.
the study
In fact, in this new study, researchers investigated an aspect that had been almost completely overlooked until now: the relationship between Instagram use and the process that allows the brain to recognize your face as your own. The body is not just an image. Every day, your brain continues to integrate information from within your body (such as your heartbeat, limb position, and visceral sensations) with information from the external environment that you see and touch. From this integration arises a seemingly obvious but fundamental sense: the conviction that the body is our body and that we exist as individuals distinct from others.
Neuroscience shows that these processes represent one of the foundations of personal identity. When functioning properly, they contribute to emotional regulation, awareness of who you are, and an immediate sense that your body is yours. When these sensations are “cancelled,” it can become even more difficult to feel completely “at home” in one’s body, to have a clear awareness of one’s internal states, and to maintain a stable distinction between self and other. Alterations in these mechanisms are therefore a vulnerability factor for various clinical conditions, such as eating disorders and dissociative disorders.
The team included 95 young men and women with an average age of 26 and who had been using Instagram for nearly eight years. Participants underwent a virtual reality experience known as body illusion. By synchronizing what a person sees and feels about their own body, these procedures can temporarily induce the feeling that another person’s face or body is their own. Bodily illusions, long used in neuroscience, allow us to study the solidity of the boundaries that separate us from others, allowing us to perceive our bodies as “our own.” Therefore, whether a person is susceptible to experiencing these illusions is an indicator of how malleable and flexible that person’s physical identity is.
As a result of the research, an unexpected phenomenon was revealed for the first time. The researchers observed a kind of “dose effect.” The longer participants used Instagram (i.e., the more years they used the platform), the more likely they were to recognize a stranger’s face in virtual reality as their own. This finding is particularly interesting because it concerns perhaps the most personal and identifiable element of the human body: the face.
Professor Riva asserts: ”Through our faces, we recognize ourselves in the mirror, build our individuality, and be recognized by others. In other words, the association does not appear in any physical expression, but in the very parts of the body that are most closely related to our sense of who we are.e.”
According to the authors, these findings suggest that prolonged exposure to image-based digital environments can affect some of the deeper processes by which the brain constructs a sense of identity, supporting what they define as the “physical identity erosion hypothesis.” In other words, after years of living in a digital world where all faces tend to look more and more like each other, we risk becoming even more difficult to remember what makes us unique.
This study does not prove that Instagram causes mental health problems, nor does it prove that these changes necessarily have negative consequences. But it brings a new perspective to the relationship between technology and identity.
Dr. Sansoni explains:The participants in this study were among the first generation to grow up with social media, and they began using these platforms in late adolescence and have been integrating social media into their daily lives for almost a decade. If connections with processes fundamental to the construction of physical identity are already emerging in these young people, the questions that arise concern new generations and new adolescents who come into contact with these technologies at increasingly younger ages and for increasingly longer periods of time.”
sauce:
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
Reference magazines:
Sansoni, M. others. (2026). Blurring the boundaries of the self: The impact of Instagram on young people’s physical identity and multisensory experiences. Computers in human behavior. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2026.109054. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563226001512
