It has become commonplace for us to seek skincare advice on the internet. But a new Northwestern University study has found that this advice may actually be doing more harm than good.
The study was published in the journal Pediatrics. It involved two “investigators” making new TikTok accounts—on which they reported themselves to be 13 years old. As they built their FYPs, the trap was set—but they couldn’t believe the results.
The skinfluencers on their timeline were between 7 and 18 years old. They applied an average of six different products for a monthly cost of approximately $168. Altogether, these routines involved around 11 potentially different ingredients on average. Some of the other videos had as many as 21 ingredients.
What damage can this cause?
As Molly Hales, lead author of the study, points out, applying that amount of chemicals on your face can lead to complications like irritation, sun sensitivity, and an allergic reaction known as contact dermatitis.
While the importance of wearing sunscreen is a well-known fact in the skincare world, only 26% of these tutorials involved sunscreen. As VICE points out, many young people are “prime candidates for melanomas” due to their freckled, pale skin. This makes the fact that so little of these skin routines involve sunscreen even more disturbing.
VICE also notes that these skinfluencers might be unaware of the fact that these products used the same ingredients, meaning that they were putting a heck of a lot of alpha-hydroxy acids, or AHAs, on their faces.
“Skin care regimens on TikTok are costly, infrequently include sunscreen, and often involve exposure to ingredients that carry a risk of irritation, allergic contact dermatitis, and sun sensitivity,” the study concludes. “They offer little to no benefit for the pediatric populations they are targeting.”
Will this be the end of teenage skinfluencers?
H/T Vice
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