The Lapse app has started to make its way around the halls of the school, gaining popularity within the student body; however, some may still be confused as to what this app entails. Marketed as the “invite-only disposable camera,” Lapse is a new form of social media.
Lapse works with the goal of growing deeper connections and creating a more unfiltered version of social media. Founded in 2021, creators Dan and Ben Silvertown wanted to create an app that would allow people to have a disposable camera on their mobile phones.
“What I hope will be the next social media app. This app is so epic.” a reviewer said on the app store preview.
Users create a group chat, each of which has a “roll” of 36 “shots” at maximum that anyone in the chat can take. However, there’s a twist: nobody can see the photos until 24 hours after the first photo is taken. Once the photo is taken, it will be moved to the “darkroom”, where it is “developed.”
The Silvertown brothers were first encouraged to develop the app after taking a backpacking trip, during which they captured their memories with a disposable camera. During their trip, they supposedly found that using a disposable camera allows people to live more in the moment, as opposed to being solely focused on showcasing it.
This app is so epic.
— Cnolanfan via App Store
“Not being able to review your shots after you take them made it more about enjoying the moment, rather than trying to showcase it,” the Silvertown brothers wrote on the Lapse blog.
The Silvertown brothers want “more life and less likes.” They want app users to be able to live in the moment and be able to experience the excitement that comes with waiting for pictures to develop. The brothers acknowledge that the world is so focused on how many likes someone gets on social media. Lapse was created in order to diminish that notion.
Concepts like this have been seen before – one example being the app BeReal, which was launched with the goal of posting photos at a certain moment no matter what in order to be more “real.”
The main message conveyed by these new apps is that social media is toxic and all-consuming. To combat this, developers are removing the ability to edit photos or adding a time limit in posting pictures. Download Lapse today to join the growing community the app is creating.
