Girls, Pictures, and Filters

Like you, I grew up in a world without smartphones. Compared to life for our kids in today’s world, our ability to take photographs was minimal. Cameras with film kept us from seeing what our photos looked like until the developed photos came back from the lab, sometimes a month or so later. Pictures that captured us in awkward moments were actually seen as prizes. We called them candids. In today’s world, smartphones double as digital cameras, and photos are seen immediately. And with social media serving to set the bar high for what a photo should look like, more pictures are probably deleted than are saved and shared. New research from the UK has found that the concern over our online appearance is so powerful, that thirty-four percent of eleven to twenty-one year old girls won’t post a photo of themselves online without using a filter or app to enhance it first. In today’s world, beauty is only skin-deep. But in God’s grand design, it is inward character that is most important.