
Do you drink? Spend a lot of time tanning in the sun? Perhaps a few cigarettes or two? A new Facebook app aims to scare teens by offering a glimpse into their future, one that claims to show the degenerative effects of bad lifestyle habits.
MirrorMe asks you to upload a photo of yourself and then fill out a brief survey on your lifestyle. From there it analyzes your face, adds some aging effects, and applies morphing changes intended to represent the cumulative damage over time of your bad habits. In addition to the kinds of practices associated with partying hard, MirrorMe also includes effects associated with poor lifestyle choices including lack of sleep, healthy eating, and exercise. Ideonic, the company behind the app says they base their effects on statistics and research provided by the Department of Health, The World Health Organization, and Dermatology research from the One Life Centre. It is, in a word, very grim, but so far more than 82,000 people have given it a try.