Why You Shouldn’t Shop for Plastic Surgeons on Instagram
Instagram isn’t just about checking out your ex or indulging your love for strange little dogs . A visually driven social network is also a way of browsing services: hairdressers, tattoo artists, and – that’s a small leap but makes sense too – plastic surgeons.
Headline: Why Finding a Plastic Surgeon on Instagram Can Be Risky (CNN)
History: The researchers wanted to know what content about plastic surgery is posted on Instagram, by whom, and under what hashtags. They searched 21 plastic surgery-related hashtags, including technical terms like #breastaugmentation as well as colloquial expressions like # boobjob, and compiled a catalog of the most popular posts. (When you do an Instagram hashtag search, you get a grid of nine “best posts” posts above the top chronological results.) After weeding out a few irrelevant posts, 163 photos and videos were left to rate. 42 percent were trained by foreign medical practitioners, 26 percent were non-certified doctors in plastic surgery, and 5 percent were non-doctors – dentists, spa and hairdressers. Just under 18% of posts were written by American or Canadian board certified plastic surgeons.
26% of doctors who are not licensed in plastic surgery but who advertise and perform cosmetic procedures should get potential patients thinking. Certified plastic surgeons warn that non-certified plastic surgeons perform worse in terms of aesthetics and safety.
At the same time, focusing on the results of “top posts”, this study was limited to posts that attract a large number of views, likes and comments, and the results of just one day – one search! – top posts. Hardly a representative sample.
A similarly limited poll – my own just now – shows that Russian and Turkish posts dominate some of these hashtags. There are spas, dentists and models who make money from search traffic. There are also some disturbingly compelling time-lapse videos from a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York:
Back to the CNN headline – yes. Just because someone posts with the hashtag #plasticsurgeon doesn’t mean they are. Before making an appointment for surgery, patients should undergo a thorough examination. Certainly! But that’s not exactly what the study said. His audience was surgeons , not patients, and his goal was to point out the communication gap that accredited plastic surgeons can fill.
Takeaway: Exploring Instagram is a powerful, but not all-encompassing way of researching plastic surgery procedures and practitioners.