How worried should parents be about young kids and Instagram filters?

Are they warping toddlers' sense of reality?

A toddler and a cartoon toddler.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

What happens when you let a toddler use a social media filter? When you present her with a live feed of her face with dog ears, with a flower crown, with big eyes and full lips and a ski-jump nose so delicate even Barbie might wonder if it's really serviceable for breathing? Or when you let a 2-year-old see what he'll look like at 65, or as a planet, or as a cartoon skull, or as every disciple at the Last Supper?

I have young children, and so do many of my family and friends. We all have smartphones with apps, most often Instagram and Snapchat, with filters that allow users to augment reality in real time. And whatever our parenting philosophy about screen time and social media, we've discovered — as, I expect, have most parents of our generation — that kids are transfixed by filters. Toddlers and even infants will sit, riveted, to see their faces morph from one filter to the next. An intriguing filter can break a tantrum. A scary one can induce terror.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.