I’ve always known that technology brings about both good and bed unintended consequences, but here’s one I never considered. Dr. Robert K. Sigal, a Washington DC-area board-certified plastic surgeon claims that Facetime encouages people to get facelifts.
“Patients come in with their iPhones and show me how they look on FaceTime,” he said in a press release. How you hold the phone matters, he said. “The angle at which the phone is held, with the caller looking downward into the camera, really captures any heaviness, fullness and sagging of the face and neck. People say ‘I never knew I looked like that. I need to do something,’” said Sigal.
Sigal is calling it the ‘FaceTime Facelift’ effect and said that his clinic has “developed procedures to specifically address it.”
In a YouTube video he said that it’s often younger patients who come in because they’re mostly the ones with iPhones who are using Facetime. Of course patients don’t ask for the “Facetime Facelift” but they do, said Dr. Sigal, “I don’t like the way I look when I’m video chatting, I seem full and heavy below the neck.”
If you’re younger, he said, “many times we can get away with a lesser procedure” such as liposuction. What Dr. Sigal doesn’t suggest in this video is that people learn to position their phones at a better angle so they’re not looking downward into the camera.
So, is this a good or bad unintended consequence? For Dr Sigal and his partner it’s obviously quite good, but what about the young patients?
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