I wanted to raise the debate to explore how true we are to our own lives in how we operate online, and whether it's harming us at all. Now, growing up in the south Wales Valleys and, believe it or not, it was before the time of the internet taking hold, I didn't have these types of influences online, but I certainly had them in magazines. In my mid twenties, I stopped buying many of the magazines for women because I was constantly being told what I should and shouldn't wear, what I should look like and what diet I should be on, and it gave me massive anxiety problems. But then, that didn't really help, because I stopped buying the magazine but then, obviously, our lives transformed online. So, all these types of diets and images transferred online and started following me to Instagram and to social media.

And so, I found myself in the same position that I was in growing up as I do now, that sometimes you do question your self-esteem and your body confidence because of the things that you see online. And if I feel like that as a 37-year-old woman, then what do our young people growing up feel like when they're constantly bombarded with these images? They feel pressurised, anxious, isolated. That may not reflect at all on their Snapchat filters, of course, but that is genuinely how they feel because they tell me on a daily basis. 

Now, I do a lot of work with people with eating disorders, and James Downs, who's an amazing mental health campaigner who had an eating disorder himself told me, 'These are more than pictures. They are telling us that looking a certain way is associated with success, sex appeal, wealth, glamour and popularity. Such pictures and messages aren't all that easy to dismiss. We're encouraged to think that we must look this way, and if we're not, we are not good enough. I have experienced an eating disorder for more than half of my life, and a big part of coming to terms with my body as it is has been learning that these images of perfection are just not realistic'.

Some aspects of what we see online can be viewed with a clear sense of bemusement. Not everything we see online is accepted as read and aspired to. There are some truly bizarre fashion and body image trends, and standards of beauty that I'm sure most people know they shouldn't follow at all—the finger-trap test, for example. This became a viral sensation on Chinese social media as a test to check whether someone is classically considered to have beauty. You simply place the top of your index finger against the tip of your nose and chin, and if your lips touch your finger, congratulations, you're beautiful, apparently. If not, then we are all doomed.

How about the 'thighbrow'? The Kardashians, the Jenners, Amber Rose and others have become hugely famous for having these allegedly beautiful curvaceous bodies. The 'thighbrow' is having a line where softer skin folds at the top of your thigh. I'm not going to do this one today, by the way. [Laughter.] If this happens then, presumably, you aren't too thin and just have the right amount of curves in the right places, and I find that truly incredible. 

Well, how about Barbie feet? The term coined by fashion website Who What Wear is where women, mostly in bikinis, post pictures of themselves standing on the balls of their feet and pointing their toes—and, again, I'm not going to try this—just like shoeless Barbies. Why? So, they can mimic the elongating and slimming effects of heels. Apparently, wearing flip-flops to the beach is out of fashion.