Should you were on TikTok this summer you will likely be very accustomed to the platform’s “Aged” filter. Using AI machine learning, just like the Daring Glamour filter, the Aged filter “predicted” how users would age by adding facial expression like wrinkles, sagging skin, thinner lips and hyperpigmentation. The filter quickly racked up over 10 billion views, with the general sentiment being considered one of dismay and distress at the outcomes. “I don’t prefer it, I don’t prefer it in any respect,” Kylie Jenner said in a video where she tests out the filter. “No. No.” Other users joked they were going to start Botox and pretended to cry.

While a few of these reactions were little question played up for social media, the trend highlighted the increasing real fear of ageing that’s seeing teens and other people of their early 20s beginning to get Botox, while others are going into debt to afford the injections. Other “hacks” to decelerate the means of time marching across our faces included not using straws, mouth taping when you sleep or not sleeping on your side, and never using the muscles in your face.

With all this in mind, it was a refreshing and much-welcome change to see TikTok users warmly embrace a recent ageing filter trend and find comfort in seeing themselves growing older. The ‘Ageing Progression Filter’ slowly transforms your face, taking it from its present-day complexion up until 2073. Over 50 years, faces undergo similar changes to the Aged filter – wrinkles are added in, skin starts to sag, hair becomes grey. But unlike the previous trend, this time users are moved positively, getting emotional and welling up with happiness.

“I wanna show this to my mom so she will see what I’ll appear to be after I’m old and gray,” user @camerakelly captions her video, with 18 million views, her eyes stuffed with tears. Many users, including @neoncarrie and @annabelbassil were moved to see themselves turning into their mums. “My smile got larger as I got older because I looked increasingly more like my mom,” @fondercat writes in her video. Others got emotional excited about their future lives as grandmothers or simply how much time they still have left to live.

“It’s super corny but this filter made me realise how rather more time there really is… 24 remains to be so young, so rather more life to be lived. Recently I’ve been craving being younger feeling like I missed out on my early twenties when really I needs to be appreciating how old I’m now,” @ryanntatum writes.

It’s not clear why the reactions to the ageing trend this time around are so rather more positive. It might be that folks are making a conscious effort to combat the negativity of the previous filter, or that the more gradual transformation presents less of a shock than the side-by-side comparison of the Aged filter; allowing people to assume their lives evolving, in addition to just their faces. What we do know, nonetheless, is that at a time when these AI filters are causing errors in our brains, when low body image is having a serious impact on mental and physical health, and the anti-ageing market makes tens of billions of dollars in sales every yr, profiting off of our self-esteem crisis; finding joy and happiness in ageing is essentially the most radical and loving thing you’ll be able to do for yourself.