The controversy over Khloé Kardashian’s unedited bikini photo exposes the ugly reality of social media

• It's no secret celebrities edit their photos, as an "unauthorized" shot of Khloé Kardashian showed.
• These altered images can have damaging effects on social-media users' mental health.
• Celebrities are also harmed by the editing, but their jobs require them to keep up the status quo.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Monday, an "unauthorized" photo of Khloé Kardashian wearing a bikini and posing near a pool was accidentally posted by an assistant.

It's an innocuous image, but Kardashian's team quickly moved to have it removed online after it started popping up on sites like Reddit and Twitter.

"The color edited photo was taken of Khloé during a private family gathering and posted to social media without permission by mistake by an assistant," the chief marketing officer for KKW Brands, Tracy Romulus, told Page Six. "Khloé looks beautiful but it is within the right of the copyright owner to not want an image not intended to be published taken down."

As Kardashian's team attempted to remove all traces of the image, people lamented its disappearance online, complimenting the star's appearance and its contrast to the highly edited shots she usually shares.

But Kardashian's reaction to the world seeing an unedited picture of her points to a larger issue with social-media use, as it can negatively affect mental health and alter people's perception of reality.

It's common for people to edit or curate photos for social media

It's not unusual for celebrities or non-famous users to post edited photos on social-media platforms, according to T. Makana Chock, a communications professor at Syracuse University and media psychologist.

"People tend to engage in selective self-presentation" on social media, she told Insider, only sharing pictures of themselves from certain angles, using filters, or taking advantage of lighting to present themselves as ideally as possible.

But some users, including celebrities and influencers, take it one step further by using photo-editing apps to completely alter their appearance.

Chock said celebrities in particular are prone to editing their photos because their image is often closely tied to their brand and their income.

"They're playing a role, and to some extent, their image actually helps them to create and define this role," Chock told Insider.

Looking at altered photos can be harmful to social-media users' mental health

Chock told Insider that social media is dangerous because it presents the false illusion of reality.

When you're looking at a magazine spread of a celebrity, you know that star had a team of makeup artists, stylists, and photographers to help them look good, as well as post-shoot editing to alter the image.

But Chock said when you see a picture of a famous person on social media, those associations don't pop up, even though it's likely the star used the same tools to optimize the shot.

"There's this perception that somehow this is an achievable ideal," Chock told Insider.

Altered social-media images can be particularly harmful to young women. In 2017, Jasmine Fardouly, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Emotional Health at Macquarie University in Australia, studied how often female college students compared themselves to people they saw on social media.

"In our study, comparisons to attractive others on social media were particularly harmful because they put women in a more negative mood, and made them feel worse about their appearance," Fardouly told Insider of the study.

Studies have also shown edited images increase body image and self-esteem issues. Chock said this is especially true for avid users who frequently interact with their favorite stars' posts.

Celebrities are victims of social media's dangers as much as they are perpetrators

It would be simple to blame celebrities for the negative impact of their edited photos, but the reality is more complicated, according to Chock.

Social media is currency for stars and influencers, and they face constant pressure to look good in the public eye. Because the images they share on social media are part of their brand, anything that doesn't fit with that brand could be damaging to their reputations.

"As an influencer who wants to be successful in what is essentially business, you are expected to appear in a certain way, to have a certain appearance," Chock said, adding that for women that often means placing the focus on their weight.

For instance, in 2018, Kardashian shared that her sisters said she needed to lose weight because her size was "hurting" their "brand," emphasizing that her image directly affects her and her family's success.

Kardashian and her peers are trapped in the social-media cycle, unable to break free even as the system hurts them and those around them.

Representatives for Khloé Kardashian did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on this story.