TikTok Shop is making billions of dollars selling products to TikTok users. And one of its biggest categories is beauty, with thousands of products from brands promising to make your face prettier, tighter, smoother, and less, well, old.
It’s generally not considered advisable to overload your face with products, since the wombo combo of too many syrups and serums can do more harm than good. But if an adult with adult judgment and adult money wants to have a 15-product, three-hour morning skin care routine, that’s their prerogative.
What about kids, though?
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We know: The whole But what about the children refrain can be tiresome. In this case, however, it seems TikTok’s large population of kid and teen users may be especially affected by the platform’s overwhelming amount of skin care marketing.
A new study in the journal Pediatrics analyzed beauty routines from 100 TikTok videos. Those videos were made by uploaders ages 7 through 18, and on average featured routines six steps long, costing around $168/month for the various products used.
Study authors found “many” of the products used by these kids and teens contained an average of 11 potentially irritating ingredients, including fragrances that can cause contact dermatitis; niacinamide, a form of vitamin B3 that can irritate skin if overused; and alpha hydroxy acids, which can make skin more vulnerable to sun damage. Only a quarter of products used in these routines contained any kind of sun protection.
Since the routines emphasize using multiple products in quick succession, “In many caes, the girls may not have realized they were applying the same active ingredient again and again, which just increases the risk of irritation,” Dr. Tara Lagu, an author on the study and a lecturer of medicine/medical social sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told CNN.
“The majority of [children] featured in these videos didn’t have any visible acne. They had perfect, clear skin,” Dr. Molly Hales, the first study author and a board-certified dermatologist in the department of dermatology Feinberg, chimed in. “For many of them, the harms probably outweigh any potential benefits.”
She, Lagu, and fellow study authors think the ingredients are an issue, but also think there is a potential major social problem stemming from the prevalence of skin care videos for kids.
“When you have kids waking up at 5:30 in the morning on a school day to have enough time to layer on these complicated regimens, I think it becomes less about health and more [about] pursuing an idea of beauty that is unrealistic and problematic,” Hales said.
They recommended against children using any kind of anti-aging products, and said basic, gentle cleansers can be used for kids dealing with the age-old teen scourge, acne. They also recommended against serums etc with any active ingredients, saying cleansers, fragrance-free moisturizer, and mineral sunscreen are all under-18s should need.
And, ultimately, they put the onus on parents, advising that they talk to their kids and explain why not everything they see on social media is good for them.
A TikTok spokesperson defended the prevalence of kid-aimed skin care routines by saying this type of content is “common across all media.” They added that TikTok is for users age 13 and older, and that anyone suspected of being under 13 has their account terminated. (Interesting, considering Hales et al were able to find videos by kids as young as seven.) The spokesperson also said TikTok works with doctors and experts in adolescent development to implement safeguarding policies. It’s not clear where those policies played here.
TikTok is right, however, that this sort of content is everywhere. YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms have spent years populated with content that say you’re only likable if you’re super skinny and look 20 forever. The question is, what are they and TikTok willing to do to actually drive a countermessage for young users?
