Looksmaxxing: How Men’s Mental Health Is Affecting Young Men’s Mental Health

Imagine a teenage boy posts his picture online. When he reads the comments, people are rating his appearance on a scale from 1 to 10, commenting on his looks, how far apart his eyes are, that his nose has a hump, and that his face lacks symmetry. Every ratio and angle of his face gets measured, judged and rated. He is being told that his genetics are not good enough. They also tell him how he can change all that with a step-by-step process. This sounds a little too dramatic and unusual, but this is the new normal for teenage boys and men online these days. 

This whole idea is called looksmaxxing, which is a combination of two words: looks and maximising. It promotes the idea that life is unfair for men who lack conventional looks and that attractive people have it all. Under the guise of self-improvement, they sell the idea that appearance is all that matters and treat enhancing appearance as a game and a statistic. In the manosphere (a network of online communities spread across podcasts, blogs, forums, websites, and social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube), this idea is increasing very rapidly. Some of it is harmless, but a significant part of it is deeply worrisome, which is putting young boys and men at risk of physical and psychological harm. 

This article aims to explore what looksmaxxing is, how it is shaping young men’s perceptions of themselves, pushing them toward physical and mental harm, all under the garb of self-improvement. 

What Is Looksmaxxing? 

Broadly, looksmaxxing can be divided into two categories. First is ‘Softmaxxing ’, which promotes ideas like men should dress well, get a better haircut, start exercising, improve their skin, and work on their posture. None of these is harmful in any way; taking care of oneself, focusing on and investing in oneself can genuinely boost confidence and wellbeing. 

But the second category, known as hardmaxxing, is where things become more dangerous. It pushes young men toward harming themselves by promoting ideas such as ‘bone smashing’, where people hit their faces believing it will change their face shape or give them a sharper jawline. A 2024 paper in the Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery raised urgent concern about this practice, describing it as a dangerous social media trend causing real physical injuries (Pacquelet et al., 2024). Another such practice is called mewing, pressing the tongue against the roof of the mouth for hours every day to try to reshape the jaw, using steroids to build muscle faster and even seeking cosmetic surgeries as teenagers, before the face has finished developing. 

All these ideas and beliefs are promoted in looksmaxxing communities. They treat appearance as some sort of statistic, like a character in a video game. Eyes, nose, jawline, hairline, muscles- everything is judged, measured, rated and compared. The goal is to level up. And the community will tell you how far you have reached and how much further you still have to go.

But why do young men fall for such ideas? Because these communities use science-sounding language, animation and videos to make all this feel rooted in medicine and biology; terms like ‘maxilla’, ‘symmetry ratios’, and ‘sexual dimorphism’ are used often as if they are settled facts. They sometimes cite real research, but it is stripped of its context and twisted to support claims that no scientists have actually made. This makes it very hard for young men to recognise the content is misleading, because on the surface it sounds credible and genuine (Konig et al., 2025). 

Read More: Psychology Behind Looksmaxxing

Comparing Yourself to the Entire World 

According to Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory (1954), everyone has a natural tendency to compare themselves to others to figure out how they are doing. It is not a flaw; it is very common and, in small doses, it is mostly harmless. The problem is that social media has changed the scale of these comparisons completely. Before social media, there were no such platforms; a young man had relatively few people to compare himself with. Most comparisons were with people around him who shared similar lifestyles and came from more or less similar backgrounds. These comparisons were manageable and less stressful. 

Today, there is virtually no limit to these comparisons. The algorithms are designed to maximise engagement, so they repeatedly recommend highly attractive, appearance-focused content because it captures attention and keeps users scrolling on their phones. The comparison is no longer local; it becomes global. Many of these people are genetically exceptional, professionally photographed, and presented with carefully edited images and filters. They usually share only the best aspects of themselves. The comparison is no longer with your immediate friends, classmates, or neighbours. Instead, many young men compare themselves with the top fraction of a per cent of people, presented as though this is what “normal” looks like. 

Research consistently shows that if someone uses social media for comparing oneself and consumes only such content, it leads to greater dissatisfaction with one’s appearance and increases symptoms related to body image disorders (Gupta et al., 2023). The more time young men spend consuming this kind of content, the worse they tend to feel about their own appearance because the standard against which they measure themselves has become almost impossible to achieve. 

Read More: Psychology Reveal What Actually Makes Men Attractive to Women

Seeing Yourself Through a Stranger’s Eyes 

Psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts (1997) developed a theory called objectification theory to explain what happens when a person stops experiencing their own body from the inside and starts seeing it the way a stranger might from the outside. Instead of asking “how do I feel?” or “what can my body do?”, they start asking “how do I look?” and “what score would someone give me?”

This theory originally explained the body image pressures many women experience. But researchers are now finding that young men are going through the same thing at increasing rates. Pritchard and Whipple (2026) found that young men in appearance-focused online spaces are showing levels of this kind of self-monitoring that were previously much more associated with women. Looksmaxxing communities make this process explicit; members are actively encouraged to photograph themselves, analyse their features as if they are someone else looking in, and score what they see. It becomes a habit that does not switch off.

The psychological cost of living this way, always watching yourself, always evaluating, includes higher levels of shame, anxiety, and a disconnection from your own inner experience (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). 

“Smollification”: Being Told You Are Not Enough 

One of the most damaging things that happens inside looksmaxxing communities is something that can be called smollification: a process where members are systematically told, through ratings, comments, and comparisons, that they are physically inferior, regardless of what they actually look like. 

Look-rating forums, where users post photos to be scored by strangers, have been studied by researchers who found that in every single rating thread they analysed, at least one comment insulted the person, made unfavourable comparisons to other men, or actively encouraged self-harm (Halpin et al., 2025). Comments like “your genetics are over,” “you are a 4 at best,” and “women will never want you” are not outliers; they are the norm. 

Over time, this kind of repeated negative feedback changes how a person thinks about themselves. Psychologist Aaron Beck (1979) identified a set of thinking patterns, which he called cognitive distortions, that develop when someone is repeatedly exposed to this kind of messaging. These include: blowing small things out of proportion, a person might feel ‘my nose is slightly uneven, therefore I am ugly’; overgeneralising from one experience, ‘a girl rejected me, so I must be unattractive to everyone’; and all-or-nothing thinking, ‘I am either attractive or I am worthless, there is no middle ground’. These thought patterns, once established, are very hard to shake and can cause serious ongoing harm to mental health. 

When Insecurity Becomes a Clinical Problem 

Not everyone who worries about how they look has a mental health condition. But for some young men, the worry does not stay small. It grows. It starts taking up more and more of their day. It starts getting in the way of normal life. When that happens, it can cross into something psychologists call Body Dysmorphic Disorder, or BDD. 

A person with BDD gets stuck on a flaw in their appearance. The flaw may be tiny. It may be something only they can see. But to them it feels enormous. They spend hours checking mirrors. They compare themselves to others constantly. Some avoid going out altogether because they are scared of being judged. The distress is very real, even when the flaw is not (Phillips, 2009). 

A condition closely linked to looksmaxxing is Muscle Dysmorphia, sometimes called bigorexia. A young man with this condition becomes convinced he is not muscular or big enough, even when he clearly is. He exercises compulsively. He follows extremely strict diets. He may turn to steroids. No matter how much progress he makes, it never feels like enough. Research by Nagata et al. (2025), Ganson et al. (2025), and Fueth et al. (2025) all found the same thing: the more time young men spend watching muscularity-focused content online, the more likely they are to show signs of this condition. 

The extreme side of looksmaxxing pushes young men into a very similar cycle. A young man notices something about his face he does not like. He feels anxious. He tries to fix that anxiety by checking, measuring, researching, or changing something. For a short while, it helps. Then the anxiety comes back, usually worse than before. The cycle starts again. The rituals feel like they are helping. They are not. They are making the problem harder to escape. 

Read More: How Toxic Masculinity Fuels Male Body Insecurities

Kinetic Dysmorphia: A Standard That Never Stays Still 

When people talk about beauty standards, they usually imagine a fixed target, one particular look that society decides is ideal and that people feel pressure to achieve. But what happens when that target keeps moving? That is the idea behind kinetic dysmorphia. The standard does not stay still. It shifts constantly. And the algorithm is what keeps it moving. 

Social media platforms are built to keep people scrolling. The way they do that is simple: they keep showing content that is slightly more extreme, slightly more striking than what came before. On appearance-focused platforms, this means the faces and bodies a young man sees keep getting more and more exceptional over time. Not because the world has changed. Because the algorithm keeps raising the bar. Research by Gupta et al. (2023) found that this kind of exposure makes body image concerns worse, particularly in young men. The unpredictable way that likes and comments arrive, sometimes many, sometimes none, keeps people hooked in the same way a slot machine does. 

So the finish line keeps moving. A young man improves his fitness and feels good. A week later, the algorithm has already shown him someone with a sharper jaw, better posture, more defined features. He was not behind before. Now he is, according to the feed. There is never a point where the community says: you have done enough. That message would make him stop watching. And that is the last thing the platform wants. 

Read More: When Social Media Becomes Judge and Jury

The Belonging Trap: Why Young Men Stay 

From the outside, looksmaxxing communities look harmful. From the inside, at least at first, they do not feel that way at all. For many young men, especially those who feel lonely, left out, or like nobody really understands them, these spaces feel like a relief. They find people who think the same way they do. People who speak the same language. People who get it. 

This matters more than it might seem. According to Gallup polling data from 2023 to 2024, roughly one in four American men aged 15 to 34 reported feeling lonely on a given day. That is a lot of young men looking for somewhere to belong. Baumeister and Leary (1995) showed that the need to belong is one of the most basic human needs. Looksmaxxing communities offer exactly that. 

But there is a catch. To stay in the community, a young man has to accept what the community believes: that his worth depends on how he looks, that his genetics are either good or bad, and that the only way forward is to keep optimising. Leaving means losing the connection. That is why many young men keep engaging with content they know is making them feel worse. The idea of losing the community feels scarier than the damage the community is doing. 

Selling You the Problem and the Solution 

It is worth asking a simple question: who actually benefits from all of this? The answer is not the young men scrolling through these communities at midnight, feeling worse about themselves with every reel, post and video they watch. The people who benefit are the ones selling things. Creators in this space earn money through jawline trainers, supplements, AI face-rating apps, and referrals to cosmetic surgeons. A young man who feels good about himself does not buy any of that. A young man who has just been told he is a four out of ten.

That is not a coincidence; it is a highly profitable business model. The creator’s income depends on the viewer’s insecurity. More insecurity means more clicks, more followers, more sales. This is not a mentor who wants to help someone improve. It is someone who needs that person to feel inadequate, because the moment they feel okay about themselves, they stop watching. 

A simple question worth asking when watching any of this content: is this person trying to help me feel better about myself, or are they trying to sell me a version of myself I can only reach by buying something from them? 

Conclusion 

Wanting to look and feel physically attractive is important for many young men. Physical appearance can influence how people feel about themselves, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood. To improve their physique and appearance, young men exercise, groom themselves, follow a healthy diet, adopt a skin care routine, and work on their posture, which is absolutely healthy and genuinely improves overall well-being. But the line between healthy self-improvement and self-harm is not always obvious, especially when there is so much misinformation and misleading content. To see the picture more clearly, one must ask: is this making me feel good about myself, or is the gap between ‘where I am’ and ‘where I want to be’ getting wider? 

Looksmaxxing communities at their most extreme convince young men that the gap will always be wide because the standard is designed to keep moving. Through constant comparison, appearance scaling, using pseudo-scientific language, research, and an algorithm that will always have someone more attractive you can compare yourself with, these communities and spaces create and deepen a kind of dissatisfaction that has real psychological consequences. Research shows that due to consumption of such content, there is a rise in rates of body dysmorphia, muscle dysmorphia, anxiety and eating disorders among young men (Nagata et al., 2025; Konig et al., 2025). 

Read More: The Psychology Behind Skincare Obsession

A person’s value does not depend upon his facial symmetry or attractiveness scores. Real confidence comes from relationships one builds, skills one acquires, character one develops and self-acceptance, none of which reflects on appearance ratings. The goal of self-improvement is not to change oneself but to be more confident and comfortable the way one is. If the content one consumes only creates self-doubt, it is just trying to monetise the insecurities. Be more mindful of what type of content you consume. If it pushes you to chase a moving target, maybe it is time to step away from such content. Real growth comes from self-acceptance, healthy habits and discipline, not from constant comparison. 

References +

• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033- 2909.117.3.497 
• Beck, A. T. (1979). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. Penguin.
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• Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 173–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x 
• Fueth, M., Bergmann, N., & Klein, M. (2025). Social media exposure and muscle dysmorphia risk in young men: A longitudinal analysis. Body Image, 52, 101–114. 
• Ganson, K. T., Rodgers, R. F., & Nagata, J. M. (2025). Muscularity-oriented social media use and muscle dysmorphia symptoms in adolescent males. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 58(3), 442–451. 
• Gupta, A., Shah, P., & Mehta, R. (2023). The algorithmic mirror: Social media use, body dysmorphic symptoms, and appearance-based social comparison in adolescents. Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking, 26(7), 498–506. 
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• Konig, D. J., Sidhu, A. S., & Corpuz, G. S. (2025). Looksmaxxing: Straddling the inflexion between self-enhancement and self-harm. Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1177/26893614251409793
• Nagata, J. M., Gorrell, S., & Murray, S. B. (2025). Social media and muscle dysmorphia in adolescents and young adults: Current evidence and clinical implications. Current Opinion in Paediatrics, 37(4), 388–394. 
• Pacquelet, E., Bon, L., Essid, L., & Guillier, D. (2024). The bone smashing and the excesses of social networking trends. Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 125(12), 101814. 
• Phillips, K. A. (2009). Understanding body dysmorphic disorder: An essential guide. Oxford University Press. 
• Pritchard, M., & Whipple, N. (2026). Self-objectification and body image disturbance in collegiate men: The role of appearance-focused digital environments. Psychology of Men & Masculinities, 27(1), 44–57.