Every morning, before my pre-teen even gets out the door for school, she does a quick scroll. Not to check the weather or a homework reminder. Not even to see what her friends posted from last night. No — she scrolls to check her face.

Not her actual face.
Her filtered face.

And that’s when it hit me: my daughter’s first mirror each morning isn’t glass — it’s an app.

She’ll swipe through different filters, widening her eyes, smoothing her skin, lifting her cheekbones, adjusting her nose. Sometimes she laughs at it. Sometimes she doesn’t. And as her mother — a Black woman who grew up in a world before filters told us what “beautiful” should look like — I’m now watching a generation learn to doubt themselves before their day even starts.

I also have a college-age daughter who is navigating this same digital maze, but with adult consequences — dating, social identity, job interviews, self-worth. She once told me she doesn’t even like posting unfiltered photos anymore because, in her words, “The algorithm punishes them.” And she’s right.

A new study reported in The Guardian found that beauty filters and racialized visual algorithms are hitting Black adolescents the hardest. The tech isn’t neutral. It brightens lighter skin. It shrinks broader noses. It narrows faces. It rewards Eurocentric features. It reinforces the same toxic beauty hierarchy our community has been fighting for generations — only now it’s automated, global, and always in their pocket.

This is not the “lighthearted fun” Silicon Valley wants to sell us.
This is digital colorism.
This is algorithmic erasure.
This is mental health harm disguised as cute sparkles and faux freckles.

And I’m watching both my daughters live inside it.

Black children already grow up in a world that questions their beauty long before they ever do. Add filters that slim noses and lighten skin, and suddenly the standard becomes not just unrealistic — but impossible.

What do you tell a Black girl who starts to think her face looks “better” blurred?
What do you tell a boy who wonders why his melanin fades away when he uses the same filter his classmates do?

These aren’t hypothetical questions in my house; these are real conversations.

My pre-teen asked me once: “Why do the filters make me look different? Is something wrong with my face?”

My heart broke. Because she’s at that fragile age where she’s just beginning to see herself in the world — and the world she sees through her phone keeps telling her that her Black features are “too much” or “not enough.”

People love to say technology is neutral, but Black parents know better. When systems are created without us in the room, they harm us — period.

The facial-recognition tech that doesn’t read darker skin.
The “beauty” filters that erase textured hair.
The editing apps that “perfect” your look by whitening your skin tone.

My college student told me she gets more likes when her photos are lightened. Imagine being 19 and learning that the internet prefers a version of you that isn’t actually you.

This isn’t about vanity.
This is about identity.
This is about mental health.
This is about Black kids being quietly trained to dislike the features they inherited from people who loved them long before algorithms even existed.

I’m raising two Black girls in a digital era that’s moving faster than any parent manual could ever keep up with. But here’s what I do know: our kids need counterweights. Something real to hold onto while the internet keeps shifting under their feet.

So in my house, we talk.
A lot.

We talk about the history of beauty standards — why they’ve always been political.
We talk about the difference between fun and false.
We talk about what real skin looks like, what real faces look like, what real joy looks like.
We talk about how algorithms don’t define them.

And more importantly, I make sure they see images that reflect them. Black girls with braids, curls, coils. Black girls with full lips and broad noses. Black girls with skin as rich as midnight and as warm as honey. Black girls who are beautiful not because someone hit “enhance,” but because they exist.

This isn’t about raising kids who reject technology.
This is about raising kids who don’t let technology reject them.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m navigating this in real time just like every other Black parent trying to raise confident children in a filtered world.

But I do know this:

Black kids deserve to see themselves and feel whole.
Black kids deserve digital spaces that don’t distort their identity.
Black kids deserve to grow up knowing their features are worthy.
Black kids deserve to look in the mirror — any mirror — and recognize themselves.

So when I catch my pre-teen checking her face through a filter, I gently remind her: “Baby, your real face is the one that matters. That’s the one that was chosen. That’s the one that was loved first.”

Because one day, I hope she won’t need a filter to tell her she’s enough.
I hope she’ll know it the moment she wakes up.
The moment she logs off.
The moment she looks in the mirror and sees a Black girl who does not need an algorithm to validate what is already true.

She is beautiful.
She is whole.
She is real.

And no app in the world can compete with that.