The Influence of Social Network Content on the Perception of Smiles—A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: This randomized trial’s objective was to investigate the impact of social network content on the perception of smiles among specialists, doctors, students of dental medicine, and laypeople. Method: A sample of 360 respondents was shown 7 digitally altered photographs of smiles (85.63% female, 14.37% male). Dental specialists, dentists, dental students (first to third year and fourth to sixth year), and laypeople made up the sample. Respondents were asked to rank the images on a scale of 1 to 10, starting with the least appealing and moving up to the most attractive, using a Google Form. Respondents were divided into experimental and control groups at the end of the following month by random selection. The experimental group followed an Instagram profile posting two images of beautiful smiles for seven days, while the control group received no intervention at all. Both groups then completed the same questionnaire again. The comparison of esthetic scores between the experimental and control group was performed using the Mann–Whitney U-test and the difference in test responses between the starting point of the measurement and after exposure to perfect content on social med