When the photo sharing app Snapchat first launched filters in 2015, users scrambled to test out the ethereal and sometimes creepy animations. Millennial parents in particular began using the hyper detailed, oversaturated, and downright goofy filters when taking photos of their own kids and sharing the images with friends and family for a quick laugh.
I’ll admit I even explored all the different ways my face looked under a flower crown. But anyone will tell you social media 10 years ago was a completely different beast—the age of the influencer was just approaching, and the idea of a curated internet presence was still fairly new.
So, I understand why Lawayne Dacosta, a mom based in Atlanta, took tons of filtered images of her baby. I can also understand why she came to realize years later that maybe she should’ve chosen the camera app over Snapchat to memorialize those precious years.
The Search for Unfiltered Baby Photos
In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, Dacosta—mom to 8-year-old daughter, London—recounts a time that she had to find baby photos of her child for a school assignment. Upon searching through her camera roll all she could find was images of her baby adorned with filter after filter.
The number of filtered images of her child outnumbered the images of unfiltered photos, she tells Business Insider. The 36-year-old mom explained that when Snapchat first came out she had never used the app before having London.
But when her daughter was born, she opened the yellow ghost icon—and never looked back.
Now that London is a bit older, the mother-daughter duo went through all the baby images. According to Dacosta, London loves the filtered photos, since she’s already familiar with filters. “It’s part of her culture—the funny filters, cutesy ones, colored and monster ones,” she tells Business Insider.
Lawayne Dacosta
Mom Says She Found the Filters Funny
Dacosta spent endless time with London during her baby years, and testing out funny filters wasn’t just a way of capturing memories—it also keep them entertained. As London got older, Dacosta began using interactive filters, laughing alongside her toddler as she opened her mouth and an animated rainbow poured out.
“It was like a game for us to play together,” she says.
But it wasn’t all just fun and games—Dacosta admits that she also used filters as a way to protect both her and her child’s privacy. “When I first had her, I wanted people to see her but I didn’t want to send her picture out to everyone,” she tells Business Insider. “Instead, I sent people photos of her with a cute little filter on it.”
Years later, they began creating content together—continuing their tradition of using social media as a tool to bond.
She Admits She Could’ve Taken More Photos Without Filters
While Dacosta doesn’t regret taking the filtered images of her daughter, she does regret not taking more images without filters.
“Sometimes, I go back through photos and think how cute she looked at a certain stage, but I realize I don’t have any photos of her in that stage without filters,” she explains.
She asserts that it’s only a tiny regret, since ultimately she and her daughter had fun taking the images in the first place, and that’s really the most important part.
