Credit: Tina Su

Join WSPN’s Tina Su as she reviews the newest, chart-topping social media app, Lapse.

In this day and age, it seems like many are addicted to their phones. Looking around in a crowd of teenagers, you are bound to see at least one of them taking a selfie, sending a text or on FaceTime. With everything at our disposal on our phones, how can we not be glued to them?

Lapse turns yet another interpersonal experience into something that involves technology. A rebranded app that launched in August, Lapse holds the No. 1 spot in the Photo & Video category on the App Store as of October, passing popular apps such as Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat in ranking.

Lapse mimics the use of a disposable camera by allowing users to take photos in the moment but it puts the photos into the “darkroom” to be developed after being taken. The app chooses to finish developing these photos at a random point of the day. Users can then choose whether or not they want to post the photos onto their profile. Users can archive the photos by swiping left or post the photos by swiping right. This forces users to continue living in the moment after capturing a picture instead of obsessing over appearance.

When you first open the app, the signup process is extremely tedious. Lapse requires you to invite anywhere from five to 10 friends, among many other tasks, in order to continue creating your profile. This requirement deems Lapse “invite-only,” a characteristic that they pride themselves on, but it seems unnecessary to me. In the almost 10 minutes that it took to make my account, I almost gave up because it seemed like it would never end. After finally creating a profile, the requirements didn’t stop. I was expected to add five contacts as friends. Although these steps help Lapse spread popularity, it can also steer people away from joining.

Once I finally started using the app, it proved to be very creative. Every photo taken looked like it came from an actual disposable camera, and the software itself was very self-explanatory. Lapse also doesn’t allow for any filters or edits by posting the authentic photo online, and every account doesn’t have followers, only friends. This encourages users to have a more healthy relationship with social media.

Even though the app itself is fun, it is overtaking the “disposable camera” concept that is not meant to be modernized. A big reason why disposable cameras have become so popular is due to the fact that they act as a lens camera and don’t show anything, with photos staying unreturned for possibly weeks. This way, people can take photos on a disposable camera without thinking about whether or not they will end up posting them. Lapse doesn’t do this and instead turns another interpersonal experience into something involving technology.

With this being said, it seems to be extremely difficult for anything to remain technology-free these days, so for what Lapse is, I would give it an 8/10. However, I wish that particular practices would remain as they are instead being forced to become technological.