There seems to be a couple of key events throughout human history so profound that we can refer to life before it and life after it. The printing press for example was one such profound event. The creation of a piece of technology so innovative that it completely changed the course of human history. One such event which had an insanely profound effect on human evolution which seems to get far less attention than it deserves is the invention of the camera phone.
The 11th of June 1997 marked the date that saw the launch of this profound innovation. It was the first time that people were able to carry one device that essentially did everything they could possibly need. What was once quite a novel experience, having your picture taken, now became widely available to anyone who had a mobile phone, which as time progressed, became impossible to live without.
The invention of the camera phone now made everyone an amateur photographer. A picture could be snapped anywhere and anytime, and as the capacity for memory and storage grew there became no real limit on how many images could be captured. The novelty of a good photo now became commonplace. What once was a rare occurrence now became a luxury we simply could not live without. The ability to take hundreds of photos in an instant, the ability to take shots with different poses, angles, lighting and locations in just a second trivialized the allure that a good photo once had.
Since the invention of social media we have witnessed a drastic change in human behavior. Mental health disorders, increased anxiety and depression, and a steady rise in global suicide have all coincided with the widespread adoption of social media platforms across the globe. But perhaps we’ve been misidentifying the true culprit all along. I don’t think the problem is with social media itself—I think it has to do with the cameras on our phones.
Where does all the trouble caused by social media come from? Body dysmorphia results from looking at Instagram models’ seemingly perfect physiques all day. FOMO (fear of missing out) stems from witnessing others’ apparently extraordinary lives. The real cause of all the unhappiness brought on by social media is people’s ability to portray a perfectly happy, healthy, and incredibly exciting life even if the exact opposite were in fact true.
Imagine how different our relationship with social media might be if we were only allowed to take photos of ourselves on film. The luxury of taking a thousand photos at once and choosing the best one to post would vanish overnight. The option of wielding what is essentially a professional digital camera in your pocket with infinite takes would disappear. Instead, we would be constrained to do with our cameras exactly what was originally intended: to capture a moment. You can’t capture a moment if you are manufacturing these moments with precise lighting, calculated angles, and countless takes to get the perfect shot. The moment you have now captured didn’t exist until you artificially created it. That is vanity distilled to its essence.
The trivialization of photography—its transformation from a meaningful act to an everyday commonality—is what’s hurting our mental health. It is the ability to manufacture moments instead of capturing them naturally as they occur which is making young people depressed. If you were limited to a roll of film, taking a photo would become sacred again, and it would be made all the more rewarding when you captured something beautiful because of the inherent scarcity. The anticipation of waiting for film to develop, the surprise of seeing which shots turned out well, the acceptance of imperfections—these experiences foster resilience and authenticity.
When you can conjure a seemingly perfect photo out of thin air every five seconds and share it to social media to portray the best version of a life you don’t even have, it’s no wonder everyone feels inadequate after scrolling through their feeds all day. The infinite capacity of digital photography has created an arms race of performative happiness, where the currency is envy and the cost is our collective mental wellbeing. Film photography, with its inherent limitations and imperfections, would force us back into a relationship with reality—one where moments are precious because they cannot be manufactured, perfected, or endlessly replicated.
