George Bernard Shaw once said that youth is wasted on the young, but now TikTok is giving us the chance to relive our glory days - at least in our imaginations. TikTok's new "teenage filter" is designed to smooth wrinkles, fix blemishes, and give people back the youthful glow that life has washed off their faces. But while the filter is harmless fun for some, it's having a different and more profound impact on many members of Generation X. 


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The filter's older users are finding themselves confronted by their youth, and are forced to look that younger person in the eye. As memo akten says in his video above, "TikTok is just full of middle-aged folks... trying to understand where their life went."  


This emotional impact is moving people to tears, with some lamenting the passage of time, and others wishing they could tell their younger selves all they have learned. "For those of you who are wondering why us old people are getting so emotional... it's because some of us were so busy just surviving that we never stopped to truly look ourselves in the eyes," says best-selling author Janae Sergio.






Of course, all of these feelings only apply if you're someone who hit puberty at a normal time, and in a normal way. In other words, if you were good looking in high school. Many users are critical of the filter, saying that it is a misrepresentation of what most of us really looked like during our youth.



For the rest of us, like Hank Green here, this filter misses the mark pretty spectacularly.