It’s Official: Those Ludicrous TikTok Skincare Routines For Teens Are Not A Good Idea

When Gen X and Millennials were teens, a skincare “routine” probably consisted of soap, makeup wipes, and those scrubs we turned to in desperation to rid ourselves of spots (if you know you know). Cosmetic science has thankfully come a long way since then, and we can all be grateful that rubbing actual fruit seeds on our faces is no longer the acne treatment du jour… but is the latest generation taking things too far the other way?

The oldest Gen Alpha kids are barely out of middle school, but that hasn’t stopped a new wave of tween influencers cosplaying their adult role models with daily vlogs, hauls, and “get ready with me” videos. Baby-faced kids are layering product over expensive product, to the dismay of parents and dermatologists – and according to the first ever peer-reviewed study on the topic, they’re right to be worried. 

Led by scientists at Northwestern Medicine, the study took a systematic look at TikTok videos produced by creators aged 18 years or younger featuring skincare regimens. Two team members created new TikTok accounts for their fictional selves, giving their ages as 13 years old. They viewed content served to them on their “For You” pages until they had collected 100 unique videos.

They found that the average routine for girls aged 7 to 18 contained six different products, and sometimes as many as 12. All of this skincare doesn’t come cheap either – the authors estimated the average cost per routine to be $168, with some exceeding an eye-watering $500. 

“It's problematic to show girls devoting this much time and attention to their skin,” commented corresponding author Dr Molly Hales in a statement. “We're setting a very high standard for these girls.”

More is not necessarily better when it comes to skincare. It’s easy to be tempted by the lure of creative packaging, impressive marketing claims, and fancy-sounding ingredients, but those ingredients don’t always necessarily pair well together. 

In one of the videos the researchers watched, the content creator applied 10 products to her face in a span of just six minutes. “As she’s applying the products, she begins to express discomfort and burning, and in the final few minutes, she develops a visible skin reaction,” said senior author Dr Tara Lagu. 

Hales added that the risk can come from using lots of active ingredients, such as hydroxy acids, as well as unwittingly reapplying them in multiple formulas. Chemical exfoliants like glycolic acid can be very helpful for certain skin conditions, but also come with clear usage instructions that should be followed. 

The videos with the most views contained an average of 11 potentially irritating ingredients. Previous research has shown that overuse of such ingredients can lead to allergic contact dermatitis, a condition that could limit the types of skin and hair products the teens will be able to use for the rest of their lives.

Among all those potentially harmful ingredients, there was one the authors would have liked to have seen that was notably absent: sunscreen. Only 26 percent of daytime regimens they saw contained sun protection. 

And beyond the risk of skin damage, Hales and Lagu were concerned by some of the messaging in the videos. “We saw that there was preferential, encoded racial language in some cases that really emphasized lighter, brighter skin. I think there also were real associations between use of these regimens and consumerism,” said Lagu.

“The pursuit of health has become a kind of virtue in our society, but the ideal of ‘health’ is also very wrapped up in ideals of beauty, thinness and whiteness,” added Hales. “The insidious thing about ‘skin care’ is that it claims to be about health.”

The study is published in the journal Pediatrics.