They came, they saw, they made a shared photo album. How the iPhone feature is building community and memories.

2024 was the year I went to five bachelorette parties, was a guest at seven weddings (and a bridesmaid at four of them) and turned 30. Along the way, I amassed 15 new shared photo albums on my iPhone.

If you’ve never used this iPhone feature, the process is pretty simple: Just create an album via your iPhone’s photo library, invite others to join and upload to your heart’s content. Everyone with access can add their own footage, see what others have posted from, say, a spring break trip to Cabo or Uncle Jack’s retirement party, and leave comments and appreciate “likes.” Each shared album on my phone has anywhere from seven to 16 contributors and contains between 85 and 2,393 photos and videos.

Julia Hoven, a 31-year-old freelance creative director living in California, is the designated “shared album girl” among her friends and family, which means she’s the one who’ll create an album and invite others to add their pics from birthday parties, weddings and group trips. “Even if I go on a trip with just myself and my husband — we just honeymooned — we will create a shared album together to see how the other person captured our travels,” says Hoven.

She’s happy to take on the role of starting the album, but she makes known her rules for participating. First up: Everyone is expected to participate. “If the photos your friends or family took never get uploaded, the shared album is all for naught,” she says. “I consider a shared album to be a shared photo agreement. Upload without judgment, and don't be afraid to be that person harassing everyone in your group chat to upload their pics.”

After all, nobody wants to be in a group project (even a fun, low-stakes one) with people who aren’t also putting in the work. And the whole community aspect of collaborating on a shared photo album — with friends and family but also with folks you’ve only just met at a wedding or birthday dinner — is what makes it more meaningful than the actual images themselves. Here’s how people are using their albums, and what experts have to say about their deeper significance.

Lori Dolnick, 62, has been making shared albums for over 10 years for both personal and professional use. She typically uses Dropbox and SmugMug to put together her albums, sharing event photos with friends and family and shots for trade shows and product launches with her public relations and marketing clients.

Dolnick tells Yahoo Life that the collective nature of these shared albums “frees you up to not be as stressed to capture everything and to be a bit more creative,” because other contributors can help fill in the blanks. Even so, she prefers some order in the finished collection. “Only share good photos and not a bunch of duplicates,” she recommends. “Then the album isn’t packed with junk.”

Not everyone feels that way. Christine Burns, 29, sees value in the unrefined moments. She and her friends prefer having access to all photos and videos taken at an event rather than a carefully edited selection, especially when creating captivating content for their social media profiles. ”It can be good to use [imperfect clips] for visual and audio hooks, blooper content or funny clips to mix in,” she says. This more-is-more approach holds appeal for the “photo dump” generation, which prefers an authentic, unfiltered experience over anything that feels too curated or perfect.

Burns also enjoys when people provide additional context, comments or emojis to photos when adding them to a shared album to make it more interactive and engaging. Bonus: It can keep the conversation going long after an event has come and gone.

Why it matters

Convenience and accessibility are key to the popularity of digital photo-keeping, according to Margot Note, an expert in archival preservation. I, for one, love that I have countless options at my fingertips I can post on Instagram or send to a loved one. But there are other more meaningful benefits, she adds, including memory recall.

“Shared digital albums create a communal memory where people can add their perspectives to a visual history,” says Note. “Instead of one person controlling the narrative, shared albums enable richer event documentation and offer a more comprehensive retelling of events.”

While certain individuals are more inclined to be the group’s photographer or historian — Hoven points to the trope of the ’90s mom who would bring her camcorder to every family function — shared content spaces allow for others to contribute different perspectives. That means Mom might actually get her picture taken too.

“Our experiences are a collage of perspectives, and shared albums are a collage of our memories,” photography expert Colin Forte tells Yahoo Life. “In many ways, having multiple collaborators for our photos and videos allows us to put more color in the memories that our brains tend to fade away with time.”

Community is also built into the experience. “Instead of the event ending when people go their separate ways, it continues as photos and videos are uploaded, commented on and revisited,” says Note. Each contribution or reaction is documented in the album’s “activity” section. “This ongoing interaction strengthens relationships by keeping the conversation alive through reminiscing, inside jokes or seeing different perspectives from the same event.” Hoven says it’s become a big part of her digital interactions with friends as she tries to limit her use of platforms like Instagram.

Even as time passes, digital spaces can constantly be updated and engaged with. “Over time, they document events and an evolving history, reinforcing community ties,” says Note. “They function as a living archive that strengthens relationships through storytelling and shared nostalgia.”

That being said, more photos isn’t always better than less, Note adds. “While having 500 photos from an event provides more coverage, it also requires more effort to sift through meaningful images. The intentionality of curating a printed album is lost in digital formats, where photos are amassed in large, sometimes overwhelming, quantities.”

Personally I could do without having some of those bachelorette memories sitting in my own photo library. But I also appreciate a chance to go and relive each moment through the shared album. As they say, what happens in Vegas … lives forever in the cloud.