My 11-Year-Old Cousin Posted a Filtered Selfie Last Week and I Can’t Stop Worrying
I was on my couch last Tuesday, eating leftover pepperoni pizza that’d been in the fridge since the weekend, scrolling mindlessly through Instagram when a notification popped up: xoxo_luna_bunny12 requested to follow you. I stared at it for a minute before I connected the username – Luna’s the name of her beat-up stuffed rabbit that she’s slept with since she was 3, I remembered. She’s my cousin, 11, and I didn’t even know she had an Instagram. The app’s supposed to be for people 13 and up, but whatever, all the kids lie about their age now, right?
I accepted, clicked over to her profile, and the first thing that popped up was the selfie. She’s got that huge viral filter on, the one that shrinks your nose, slims your jaw, blows up your eyes to what looks like twice their normal size. She’s pouting at the camera, leaning into her bathroom mirror, and the caption says ugly but whatever 🥺. I sat there for a good five minutes after that, pizza going cold in my lap, just staring. I know that sounds dramatic, but it hit me weird. I used to babysit this kid, for god’s sake. I remember when she was 5, she’d run around my grandma’s backyard covered in mud, screaming that she was a dinosaur, and didn’t care who saw her.
Last Thanksgiving, I caught her hiding her phone under the dinner table, screen tilted away from everyone. When my aunt, her mom, asked what she was looking at, she snapped “nothing” so loud the whole table went quiet, then got up and ran to the bathroom. I followed a minute later because I wanted to make sure she was okay, knocked soft, and when she opened the door her eyes were all red. Some boy in her class left a comment on her TikTok saying she looked fat in her dance video, she told me. I hugged her, told him he’s an idiot, she’s the coolest 10 year old I know, and she just nodded into my shoulder and didn’t say anything else. When I brought it up to my aunt later, she just waved it off. “All the kids tease each other online now,” she said. “She needs to learn not to care, it’s not that big of a deal.” I didn’t push it. It felt awkward, like I was overstepping, like I was calling her a bad mom for not caring enough. So I just dropped it. But I didn’t stop thinking about it.
We went to the mall two months ago, she asked me to take her to get new jeans for school. We were in the fitting room, she came out in a pair of high-waisted skinny jeans, and she turned sideways to look in the mirror, then pulled at the waistband and said, “Do these make me look thick?” I told her no, they looked great, she’s 11, she’s supposed to have that soft little belly from growing, it’s normal. She just shrugged and turned back to the mirror, picked out a smaller size that I could see was cutting into her waist, and said this one’s better. I bought her a matcha latte after that, her mom won’t let her have caffeine so it felt like our little secret, and for 10 whole minutes she was that goofy kid I remember again. She rambled about her hamster, Mr. Nibbles, who escapes his cage every other night and chews through the corners of her notebooks, how she won first place in the school art contest for a drawing of a fox. Her face was all lit up, she was talking with her hands, didn’t check her phone once. Then it dinged, and she pulled it out of her pocket, and her whole face just shut down, like she flipped a switch. I watched her scroll for a minute, frowning at whatever she was seeing, and that twisty worried feeling came back again.
I did something that’s kind of weird, I’ll admit. I made a fake account to follow her, after that first request. I didn’t want her or my aunt to think I’m being creepy, I just wanted to keep an eye on what she’s posting and who’s commenting. Half her followers are accounts with no profile pictures, usernames that look like random strings of numbers, and I’ve reported at least three comments from grown men asking her to post more videos. Instagram never does anything, of course. The other day I saw her explore page, and it’s just full of 20-something influencers talking about how to get a “flat tummy for summer”, what “acne-safe” skincare you need to buy, what they eat in a day to lose 10 pounds – half of them eat like, an apple and a cup of broccoli for lunch. She just got her first pimple last year, for god’s sake. She’s still growing an inch every six months.
I know people say kids are resilient these days. They grew up with social media, it’s normal for them, it’s just how it is. I don’t buy that. When I was 11, the mean stuff kids said stayed at school. I could go home, turn off my flip phone, and it was gone. I didn’t have a million pictures of perfect bodies and perfect faces staring at me from my pocket every minute of every day. I got to be awkward and lumpy and goofy and messy without having to post it for everyone to judge.
I saw her at a family barbecue this past weekend. She sat next to me on the picnic bench, we shared a bag of sour cream and onion chips, and she showed me the new drawing she did of Mr. Nibbles wearing a tiny cowboy hat, it was so good I told her I wanted a copy to hang on my fridge. Then she turned her phone around to me and asked if I could help her pick a new profile picture. I pointed to the one she took at the zoo back in April, where she’s holding a blue raspberry snow cone, got ice cream all over her cheek, laughing so hard her eyes are crinkled shut. I said that one’s my favorite, you look so happy. She made a grossed out face and pulled the phone back. “No way,” she said. “My double chin shows in that one. It’s ugly.”
I didn’t say anything. I just helped her pick the filtered selfie she already liked, the one that makes her look like a totally different person. After she got up to go play cornhole with the other kids, I just sat there stirring my lemonade, and that twisty feeling in my chest got bigger. I don’t have any big solution. I’m not her mom, I can’t take her phone away, I can’t make all the mean comments and the filtered selfies and the weird men following her go away. I know I’m probably overreacting. Some people would say I’m making a big deal out of nothing. All I know is, she’s 11. She doesn’t even know what her own face is supposed to look like yet. And I can’t stop worrying that the internet’s gonna steal that goofy, mud-covered, ice-cream-stained kid before she even gets to be her. (1182 words)
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