TikTok Skincare Trends Are Ruining Your Face

Is your kid glued to TikTok’s beauty influencer scene? Do they spend way too much of your money on skincare products in the endless quixotic pursuit of flawless skin?

A new study published in the journal Pediatrics says that complicated beauty regimens involving tons of different creams and serums, oils, and such come with a wide variety of long-term risks. They could even permanently damage your skin.

Northwestern University researchers dove deep into TikTok’s skincare rabbit hole. They focused on creators who range from ages 7 to 18. A 7 to 18-year-old skincare influencer feels like something that should get parents brought up on some form of child endangerment charges. 

Anyway, they found that these kids are slathering on an average of six products, some of them up to a dozen different products, with a monthly price tag of around $168. Their routines involved applying around 11 different active ingredients.

Stop Following TikTok Skincare Routines. They’re Ruining Your Face.

Lead author Molly Hales points out that loading your face up with tons of chemicals significantly ups the risk of irritation, sun sensitivity, and even a lifelong skin allergy called contact dermatitis.

One thing a lot of these influencers, and anybody else who has a complicated skin routine involving a variety of different products, may not be aware of is that a lot of these products use the same active ingredients, like alpha-hydroxy acids, or AHAs. It’s like taking a recommended dose of ibuprofen and chasing it with some Advils without realizing that ibuprofen is the active ingredient in Advil.

People may not realize that they’re overdosing their faces.

Ask any adult skincare expert, and they’ll tell you that sunscreen is an invaluable, immovable pillar of any daytime skincare routine. Only a paltry 26 percent of daytime routines in these videos included sunscreen.

A lot of these kids are preteens with light skin and freckles, meaning that they are prime candidates for melanomas, yet are skipping SPF entirely. These people should be walking out of the house looking like ghostly apparitions, that they’ve just risen from the dead, because they are so slathered in chalky, high SPF sunscreen.

The study concludes these elaborate routines offer “little to no benefit” for kids. They’re expensive, time-consuming, and expose young skin to irritation, allergies, and sun damage.

More than anything, the study tells us that there are a lot of parents out there that are either doing a piss-poor job of policing what kind of content floats across their kids’ screens, or they simply do not care.