Heard of the 10 Year Challenge? Why some are hesitant to post their ′2009 vs. 2019′ photos on social media

17 JANUARY 2019

f you’ve been thinking about trying your hand at social media’s 10 Year Challenge and are concerned about your privacy, you may want to take a moment to see why some are saying the trend may not be so harmless.

Like many fads in the social realm, this one could come with some unintended consequences.

First, for those who are catching up on the 10-year craze, the challenge, otherwise known as #2009vs.2019, the #HowHardDidAgingHitYouChallenge and the #GloUpChallenge, involves posting two photos of yourself – one from 2009 and one from 2019.

In lieu of that, 2008 and 2018, or some other decade or substantial length of time. On Facebook, people shared their first profile picture with their current picture.

In all cases, the idea is to show how you’ve changed (or stayed the same, like Reese Witherspoon, pictured below) over that period.

Celebrities ranging from Janet Jackson to Snooki, Kevin Smith, Fat Joe and Tyra Banks have taken up the challenge. Some, like Smith and Fat Joe, showed off a considerable slimdown, while others just had fun looking back 10 years. (Or 50, like Samuel L. Jackson.)

What could go wrong?

“Y’all posting these #2009v2019 comparison photos and that’s how you get your identity stolen,” tweeted Desus Nice of the upcoming Showtime series “Desus vs. Mero,” on Sunday.

There may be something to that, says Kate O’Neill, writing for Wired.

“Imagine that you wanted to train a facial recognition algorithm on age-related characteristics, and, more specifically, on age progression (e.g. how people are likely to look as they get older),” she says. “Ideally, you’d want a broad and rigorous data set with lots of people’s pictures. It would help if you knew they were taken a fixed number of years apart—say, 10 years.”

It’s not that Facebook or Twitter or Instagram didn’t already have photos of you, she says. It’s just that they just weren’t clearly organized in a specific, labeled progression, she explains. The date you posted a profile picture doesn’t necessarily mean that’s when it was taken. So with this trend, we are providing more detailed data by denoting when each photo was taken.

“In other words, thanks to this meme, there’s now a very large data set of carefully curated photos of people from roughly 10 years ago and now,” O’Neill says.

If you’re OK with that, by all means, proceed with showing off your glo-up. But know this:

“Age progression could someday factor into insurance assessment and healthcare,” O’Neill says, allowing the lighthearted trend a dystopian ending. “For example, if you seem to be aging faster than your cohorts, perhaps you’re not a very good insurance risk. You may pay more or be denied coverage.”

And law enforcement could use facial recognition technology to track people — she notes that Amazon sold its facial recognition services to police departments. But O’Neill also says the technology can be used to find missing children.

Ultimately, every digital footprint comes with a wide host of implications for how that information can be used. Of course, it’s up to you to decide what photos and information you want to share, even if you’re just doing it for the “likes.”

By `Amy Kuperinsky

NJ Advance Media for NJ.com