This has been made even more clear by TikTok’s latest Aged filter, which uses artificial intelligence to give users a brief look into their future reflection.
Even celebrities like Ronan Kemp and Kylie Jenner coulnd’t help but catch a glimpse of their wizened faces, which cosmetic surgeon Dr Monika Kieu said was ‘so spot on.’
Kylie Jenner couldn’t help but show her disappointment with what she saw, exclaiming: ‘I don’t like it at all. No. No.’
While the majority of people are having fun with the filter, acting as themselves in 2063 for example, or testing the reliability of the filter by using it on young photographs of now-older celebrities, there’s an air of fear surrounding the lined faces, too – and it’s not new.
One TikToker said that, although she knows there’s ‘nothing wrong’ with ageing, when she noticed that the filter made her look older than other people, her gut reaction was to fix up her skin routine.
‘I’m 100% not okay with this,’ wrote another girl after using the filter.
Another said she needed to get filler ‘now’.
The truth is, ageing filters always go viral on TikTok (remember last year’s controversial teen filter?) and there’s a reason for this. Many of us are obsessed with how we’ll look as we age – and putting it off for as long as we can.
TikToker Jareen Imam picked upon the virality of the newest filter (the third of the year, fyi) and said there were four main reasons why we fear ageing: the fear of death, a loss of independence, social isolation and uncertainty.
This was echoed by Dr Kieu: ‘The effect is viral because it manipulates the basic human fear of ageing and eventually dying,’ she said. ‘It reminds us that we are human.’
But what these commentaries failed to pick up on is the social pressure to age gracefully.
Ageism, according to the Royal Society for Public Health UK (RSPH), is one of the biggest forms of discrimination today, particularly in Europe, but it mostly goes unchallenged.
Ageism, it said, is gendered, with women in particular facing societal pressure to slow the ageing process down as much as possible.
It’s drilled into us — by the beauty industry as well as media — that ageing is bad, so there’s no wonder that there’s a morbid curiosity around it.
But, as TikToker Melissa Violin pointed out, we’d all be lucky to live that long.
Maybe it’s time to reframe the ageing process, don’t you think?
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