I am an occasional TikTok user at best so I may be late to this particular trend, but one filter that popped up in my feed this past week was the Aged filter, which is purported to be a “realistic” filter of how faces age over time. The videos are generally what you might expect – mostly young people expressing shock, horror, or repeated nos (thank you, Kylie Jenner) about these older versions of themselves, and very occasionally a positive reaction saying they look like their grandma or that they should be so lucky.
Of course, there are multiple essays one could write about the issues of ageism, beauty standards, cosmetic surgery, anti-aging rhetoric, etc. etc. I don’t feel particularly qualified to write them, so instead you should read Jessica DeFino’s newsletter The Unpublishable for her excellent take on the these topics.
However, like everyone else, I did open the filter to see what I looked like. I took a screenshot, because what a cool hack to identify with my future self.
A bunch of research studies used more rudimentary versions of this aging technology (look how far we’ve come since 2011!) and found that there are lots of benefits of being able to envision future you as you, not as a stranger. When you connect with your future self, you are more likely to save for your retirement, improve your health, and report things like greater life satisfaction. 1
So now, in addition to writing a letter to your future self or understanding the “end of history illusion” to connect with future you, you can also use a TikTok filter.
Hello, future me!
> When you connect with your future self, you are more likely to save for your retirement, improve your health, and report things like greater life satisfaction.
That's an interesting potential application of this feature!