When photo-sharing app Snapchat first released filters in 2015, users rushed to try out their fantastical and sometimes creepy animations. Millennial parents in particular have started using highly detailed, oversaturated, and downright goofy filters when taking photos of their kids and sharing those images with friends and family for a little laugh.
I admit that I even looked in every possible way to see how my face would look under a flower crown. But anyone will tell you that social media was very different 10 years ago. The age of influencers was just around the corner, but the idea of a curated internet presence was still fairly new.
Now we know why Atlanta-based mom Rawane DaCosta took tons of filtered images of her baby. It’s also understandable why she realized years later that maybe she should have chosen the camera app instead of Snapchat to commemorate those precious years.
Search for unfiltered baby photos
In an exclusive interview with business insider, DaCosta, a mother of an 8-year-old daughter who lives in London, tells of a time when she had to find a childhood photo for a school project. When I searched my camera roll, I found images of babies adorned with filter after filter.
The number of filtered images of her children exceeded the number of unfiltered photographic images, she says. business insider. The 36-year-old mother explained that when Snapchat first came out, she had never used the app until she was living in London.
But when her daughter was born, she opened the yellow ghost icon and never looked back.
Now that London is a little older, the mother-daughter duo has gone through all the images of their baby. DaCosta said London loves filtered photos because she’s already used to them. “It’s part of her culture: funny filters, cute filters, colored filters, monster filters,” she says. Business Insider.
Lawayne Dacosta
Mom said she thought the filter was interesting.
As a baby, DaCosta spent endless hours in London. Experimenting with interesting filters not only helped me capture memories, but also entertained them. As London grew older, Ms. DaCosta began using interactive filters and laughed along with her toddler as she watched animated rainbows pour out when she opened her mouth.
“For us, it was like a game to play together,” she says.
But it wasn’t just fun and games. DaCosta also admitted that she used filters as a way to protect her and her children’s privacy. “When I first gave birth to her, I wanted everyone to see, but I didn’t want to send everyone pictures,” she says. business insider. “Instead, I sent people pictures of her with cute little filters on them.”
Years later, they began creating content together and continued the tradition of using social media as a bonding tool.
She admits she could have taken more photos without the filter
DaCosta doesn’t regret taking filtered images of her daughter, but she regrets not taking more unfiltered images.
“Sometimes I look back at the photos and think about how cute she looked on a certain stage, and then I realize that I don’t have any photos of her on that stage without a filter,” she explains.
She claims that, after all, she and her daughter enjoyed taking the photo in the first place, so it’s only a small regret, and that’s really the most important part.
