10 Year Challenge

Submission 44,660

About

10 Year Challenge, also known as How Hard Did Aging Hit You Challenge and the hashtags #10YearChallenge and #HowHardDidAgingHitYouChallenge, is a photography comparison challenge in which participants post selfies taken 10 years apart, most often comparing 2009 vs. 2019.

Origin

On January 8th, 2019, Twitter^[13] user @otterbutt posted the earliest known usage of a 10-year challenge-esque post, tweeting to selfies, one from 2009 and the other from 2019, and using the hashtag #TenYearSelfie. The post received more than 10 retweets and 330 likes in one month (shown below).

In January 2019, the "How Hard Did Aging Hit You Challenge was started on Facebook. ^[1] One of the earliest available variations of the challenge was posted by TV meteorologist Damon Lane on January 11th, 2019.^[2] The post received more than 350 reactions and 65 comments in four days (shown below).

Spread

Later that day, Twitter user @gabbymartin4000 tweeted, ^[3] "Saw this 'how did age hit you post' on Facebook where you compare your first profile picture with your current one… I now feel like I’m 100 and should probably start using an eye cream. #aging #old #makeitstop" (shown below).

Over the following weekend, social media users and celebrities began posting their entries in the challenge on various social media sites (examples below). Twitter^[4] published a Moments page to archive the popularity of the meme.

Several media outlets published articles about the challenge, including the New York Daily News,^[1] The Daily Dot, ^[5] Romper,^[6] Fox^[7] and more. On January 29th, the website Ebaum's World^[14] published a collection of 10 Year Challenge photos.

Climate Change Edits

Alongside the spreading challenge, many internet users used the trend to make points about climate change, showing how much the earth has changed since 2009. Some posts of this kind include a post by Facebook^[8] user Julien Geoffrion that gained over 13,000 reactions (shown below, left). Twitter user @juanacalvete tweeted several photos illustrating the effects of 10 years of climate change, gaining over 276,000 retweets and 271,000 likes (shown below, right). Jokes of this sort were covered by

Privacy Concerns

On January 12th, 2019, author Kate O'Neill posted a tweet1^[0] speculating that the 10 Year Challenge could be used to "train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition" (shown below). Within six days, the post gained over 23,300 likes and 10,500 retweets.

On January 15th, Wired published an article by O'Neil titled "Facebook's '10 year challenge' is just a harmless meme – right?", which elaborated on her privacy concerns regarding the meme. The following day, Redditor Darqseyd submitted the article to /r/technology,^[12] where it gathered more than 10,400 points (95% upvoted) and 770 comments within 48 hours.