Children as young as four are being encouraged to manipulate their images to be more beautiful through online selfie apps and games which have been condemned as "abhorrent" and damaging to young people's mental health.

FaceTune apps, among the top ranked last year on the Apple store and advertised as suitable for children 4+, enable users to enlarge their eyes, thin their noses and supersize their lips.

Games which challenge girls to beautify their image and dress up for a “dream date” were found by researchers to undermine eight and nine-year old girls’ body confidence and self-worth after just 10 minutes playing.

Dr Amy Slater, deputy director of the University of West of England’s Centre for Appearance Research who conducted the study, said such gamification of appearance was “abhorrent” and left children feeling they did not measure up to an unattainable ideal image.

“These firms are profiting financially off appearance concerns and insecurities,” she said.

Dr Jon Goldin, vice chair of the adolescent and child faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “These apps would seem to reinforce and indeed amplify children’s anxieties about how they look, which is reprehensible in my view and detrimental to young people’s mental health.