With the development of technology, communication has taken on a completely new form. Individuals move from physical rooms to virtual ones, trying to find their way in using the tools and functions that „room“ offers. Today, one of these tools are social networks - platforms that have taken on great importance in a short period of time both in the private and business life of an individual. With the increasing reliance on virtual environments for selfpresentation and social interaction, it is critical to understand the role that platforms like Instagram play in shaping society's standards of beauty. That is why the focus of this thesis is on the Instagram social network. The main goal of this thesis was to analyze the perception of youth about the display of beauty on Instagram. Thesis is divided into two parts - theoretical and research. In the theoretical part of thesis, author explains visual perception, development of beauty, history of social networks, i.e. Instagram, motives for using Instagram and how it constructs reality. This thesis also emphasizes the importance of media literacy in understanding verbal and non-verbal communication on social networks. The quantitative method was used in the research, that is, an online survey questionnaire was chosen as the data collection instrument. The non-probabilistic convenience sample consisted of 179 respondents aged 18 to 25. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that the respondents believe that the representation of beauty on Instagram is unrealistic in comparison to reality and that it mostly negatively affects the perception of an individual's appearance. Their opinion is that Instagram differs from Facebook due to the mentioned characteristics. In conclusion, the author emphasizes the importance of media literacy and the understanding of virtual manipulation and emphasizes the necessity of using critical thinking when consuming information placed by the media, in this case, social networks.