Laravel Models - Casting dates to Carbon instances

In a Laravel model it is possible to casts fields as Carbon dates like so:

class Example extends Model
{
    protected $casts = [
        'date_of_birth' => 'date'
    ]
}

However this can also be done like so:

class Example extends Model
{
    protected $dates= [
        'date_of_birth'
    ]
}

What is the difference and what is the recommended way of doing this?

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