It is common to blame social media for making people more insecure. Conor Deane, a marketing strategist who studies consumer behaviour, offers a more precise version of that idea. Social media, he argues, did not invent insecurity, which has always existed. What it changed is that it made the perceived solution to almost every insecurity visible, turning private dissatisfaction into something that now feels addressable.
The first half of the dynamic is familiar. Social platforms increased how often people compare themselves with others, surrounding them with curated images of appearance, lifestyle, and success. That constant comparison can heighten awareness of one’s own perceived flaws, making people more conscious of things they might once have barely noticed. This much is widely discussed, and it is only part of the picture.
The second half, in Deane’s framing, is what makes the shift distinctive. The same feed that surfaces an insecurity now also surfaces its apparent remedy, along with a constant stream of examples suggesting it has worked for others. A person can, within a single scrolling session, become aware of something they dislike about themselves, discover a treatment or product that promises to address it, and see hundreds of examples of other people’s claimed results. The problem and the apparent solution arrive together, tightly linked.
This changes the psychology of insecurity in a meaningful way. When a perceived flaw felt permanent, people were more likely to simply live with it. When it starts to feel fixable, and when the proposed fix is visible and seemingly normal, the relationship to that flaw changes. It moves from something accepted to something optional, and optional things invite decisions. Deane’s point is that people are not necessarily becoming more flawed or even simply more insecure. More of the things they dislike about themselves now feel like problems with available answers.
He points to how broad this pattern has become across categories. The rapid cultural rise of GLP-1 medications for weight loss is one widely discussed example of how quickly a solution can move from niche to mainstream conversation. Cosmetic treatments, teeth straightening and whitening, elaborate skincare routines, and hair restoration follow a similar arc, each becoming more visible, more discussed, and more normalised online. In each case, a concern people once kept quiet is now paired with a well-publicised path that promises to address it.
The normalisation matters as much as the visibility. When a solution is rare or stigmatised, few people pursue it. When it appears constantly in ordinary people’s feeds, discussed openly and accompanied by countless visible examples, it stops feeling exceptional and starts feeling like a normal choice. Deane argues that this normalisation is often the real turning point, converting something people privately considered into something they feel comfortable actually doing.
For businesses, this represents both an opportunity and a responsibility that Deane is careful not to gloss over. The opportunity is obvious, since demand for solutions to visible insecurities is large and growing. The responsibility is subtler, because the same mechanisms that make a solution feel accessible can also intensify the insecurity that drives people toward it. How a business communicates in this environment, whether it informs and reassures or simply amplifies anxiety, is a genuine choice with real consequences for the people on the other side.
Deane’s own interest is in the consumer behaviour underneath all of this, in understanding why people make these expensive, emotional decisions and how perception shapes them. His analysis is less a celebration of the trend than an attempt to see it clearly. The cultural shift is real, and pretending otherwise helps no one, but understanding it honestly includes acknowledging its mixed effects.
The takeaway he offers is a reframing of a common complaint. The familiar story is that social media makes people feel worse about themselves. The more complete story, in his view, is that it makes more of what people dislike about themselves feel fixable, and that this sense of fixability, more than insecurity alone, is what is reshaping entire consumer categories. Understanding that distinction, he suggests, is essential to understanding modern consumer behaviour.
