‘TikTok is a kids app’ is a line we heard for years before us millennials infiltrated it. Are we now just as addicted as they are to the attention-grabbing app? Yes. Do we think its trending videos are tantamount to the end of society? Potentially. Look no further than the latest trending face filter' for evidence, proof that if there were ever an app us millennials didn’t deserve to be addicted to, it’s TikTok. Honestly, we should’ve left it to the kids – at least their self-esteem hasn’t already been wrecked by growing up in the 90s.
I’m talking about the new ‘ageing filter’, popularised by Kylie Jenner who posted using the filter yesterday. With some visible eye bags, deep smile lines and less flawlessly poreless skin, the 25-year-old posed and smiled before admitting ‘I don’t like it… I don’t like it at all, no, no.’
You’d be right in thinking that Kylie Jenner doesn’t even look particularly old in the filter, but nonetheless, her comments have been flooded with support – yes, seriously. ‘Still beautiful’ one user commented, while another added ‘The crazy thing is you still look good?’
We know guys, it’s just CRAZY that a woman could look good with an ageing appearance, right? Unthinkable even! Kylie is just so so brave for sharing this vulnerable moment with us.
But seriously, the reaction – hers and her followers – has got us thinking, has social media made ageing the most subversive thing a person can do? Filters like this are meant to be shocking, and whether intentionally or not they certainly provoke ageist commentary around how much better someone looked before, or how they ‘still’ manage to look good now.
It's an unsurprising development given that face filters on social media have always infantilised us, smoothing skin and eye bags and smile lines even back in the Snapchat days when all you wanted was to peace and pout with a flower crown on. But what will it mean for younger generations who only ever grow up looking at fake, flawless skin through their camera lens? With technology making us so blind to real skin texture and natural signs of ageing, they may just lose their minds at the first sign of a wrinkle.
For us millennials, seeing commentary like this resurface online with the visual stimulation of ‘ageing filters’ is starkly depressing. A reminder that apps like this, while technologically advanced, are far from progressive when it comes to dismantling the beauty standards that wreaked havoc on our self-esteem as teenagers. Looking back, only seeing poreless skin in magazines was a blessing in disguise. Now, two clicks and you can see yourself 10 years younger or 10 years older.
We need to interrogate these kind of trends, not promote them – because it’s not just older women that are affected by the ageism, it’s all of the kids that see this kind of commentary and don’t yet have the ability to grasp why it’s problematic.