With a face-aging app, I set out to “meet” my older self.

As I wrote about connecting with your future self I was tempted to experience the phenomenon firsthand. Sort of. 

I was curious, yes, but I have to admit the idea of seeing a “digitally age-progressed rendering” of my face made me uneasy. I consider myself a feminist, but it’s hard to overcome the cultural conditioning that tells all of us, and certainly women, that old equals unattractive or depressing.

Still, it was intriguing to imagine that seeing myself as an older woman could shift my perceptions, or might make me more intentional about planting seeds for the future. So I signed up for Future You, a site co-created by Hal Hershfield in collaboration with MIT Media Lab and other organizations. (The site anonymizes responses for research purposes.)

There are a number of face-aging apps you can try these days, but two things appealed to me about this one. First, the interface isn’t cheesy, something that even Hershfield worried about. 

Future You not only serves up a visual of you at whatever age you select (in my case, 80) the AI algorithm also uses your inputs to enable you to chat, through a messaging app, with that older version of you.

I submitted answers to a range of surprising questions — from who are the people most important to me to what was one of the lowest moments in my life. Next, I waited nervously to meet “me.” 

I know aging is inevitable — but we do have some control over how that process unfolds. And I understand that when we care more deeply about our future selves, we can make better choices now. But what if I found Older MP ugly or off-putting? What if I didn’t want to make any effort to improve my life, my habits, my finances with her in mind?

Then, in less time than it takes to google “anti-aging serum,” her face appeared on screen next to mine (above), and I thought: Awww. Older MP didn’t look much like Current MP, but she did uncannily resemble my maternal great-grandmother. Was that an accident, or did the technology somehow tap into my gene pool? 

Her eyes were kind and her face was sweet, not off-putting at all. The app then gives you the option to have a text conversation with your future self — similar to the way you might interact with a chatbot, but far more personal. I started to ask her/me a couple of questions, but I found it more rewarding just to look at her and think about…both of us. 

I understand why this exercise can be so powerful. It’s not that in the space of 30 seconds I felt my motivations change (although I did want to do something about her hair). But a strong current of empathy went through me. She matters to me, the she who is me, or will be. I found myself thinking, I want the best for you.

Was it also an accident that the very next morning I resumed my lapsed yoga routine? Hmmm. Time will tell.