By Randa Darwish

If you are a social media user you should have came across #10YearChallenge in the last couple of weeks.

It all started by the beginning of 2019 on Facebook, when users went to share their photos; one in 2009 and another 2019 to point out the changes they had gone through during the ten-years-period.

Some believed the challenge’s idea was all a conspiracy by Facebook, where it started, to help train the social media platform’s facial recognition algorithms on age progression. However, others argued it is more of a trend that starts at the beginning of each year where people can actually have the chance to brag about how they look today.

Millions of users from around the world have taken part of the challenge to point out the changes they went threw on personal level.

Meanwhile, others used to reflect more important issues that are affecting the current world; including the climate change and humanitarian crisis that are taking places in several parts of the world.

But in the Middle East, people have used the challenge to highlight the changes their countries went through during the ten-years-period. Especially as this decade has led to massive changes throughout the region through the Arab Spring protests and wars rocked other countries.

In December 2010, Tunisians went to the streets to protest the current economic and social situation and demand the resignation of their leader, Zain Abdeen bin Ali.

The protests in Tunisia and their success sparked a series of revolutions in the Middle East dubbed the 'Arab Spring.' It reached Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and many others.

Arabs on social media have went to Twitter to share photos of their countries in 2009 and compare it to 2019, to show the level of destruction it reached.

Yemenis shared photos of the “Happy Yemen” as their country used to be called in Arabic before the war rocked it after calls for a regime change in 2011. Now Yemen is suffering from one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world with hundreds of thousands dead and millions of immigrants.

It was not different for Syria. More than 360,000 people were killed and millions displaced after a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011 escalated into full conflict.

Social media users went to share photos from Syria before 2011 and photos now that show the level of destruction Syria has witnessed in the last few years.

Shocking photos of Mosul, Iraq have also showed the difference took place during 10 years in the city where a military intervention was launched by Iraqi government and allied forces to recapture the city were seized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) in 2014.

Sudanese have also had their share of comparing their country in 2009 with Sudan in 2019, where protests had started against economic deteriorating situation and now they are on the rise in different parts of Sudan to demand their long-term ruling president Omar Bashir leave office.

Other parts of the Middle East have also witnessed change.

Photos for Dubai’s Burj Khalifa rising in Dubai were shared to compare the city in 2009 with 2019.