WHO IS THE REAL YOU: DIGITALLY ALTERED IMAGES AND ITS ASSOCIATION TO YOUTH’S IDEAL BODY PERCEPTION

The rapid rise in beauty standards resulting from technological advancements in today's world has a profound impact on everyone. As a result, this generation has been exposed to unattainable beauty standards, which may have an effect on how they view themselves. This study aims to determine the relationship between youth perceptions of their bodies and digitally altered images, as well as the importance of the issue in the current generation. Respondents in this study included 300 college students from the University of Mindanao in the Philippines, ranging in year from first to fourth. A descriptive-correlational research design was employed in this quantitative study. The data was not normally distributed, according to the KolmogorovSmirnov test (r value = 0.05, p = 0.31). When the researchers tested the levels of both categories using the mean and standard deviation, researchers found that respondents had a moderate degree of photo manipulation (X = 2.40, SD = 0.851) and students had a notably high level of body appreciation (X = 4.18, SD = 0.657). The results revealed a weak correlation between young people's perceptions of their bodies and digitally altered images (r value = 0.358, p = - 0.05).