Young girls are using anti-aging products they see on social media. The harm is more than skin deep
When she was in fifth grade, Scarlett Goddard Strahan started to worry about getting wrinkles.
By the time she turned 10, Scarlett and her friends were spending hours on TikTok and YouTube watching influencers tout products for achieving today’s beauty aesthetic: a dewy, “glowy,” flawless complexion. Scarlett developed an elaborate skin care routine with facial cleansers, mists, hydrating masks and moisturizers.
One night, Scarlett’s skin began to burn intensely and erupted in blisters. Heavy use of adult-strength products had wreaked havoc on her skin. Months later, patches of tiny bumps remain on Scarlett’s face, and her cheeks turn red in the sun.
“I didn’t want to get wrinkles and look old,” says Scarlett, who recently turned 11. “If I had known my life would be so affected by this, I never would have put these things on my face.”
The skin care obsession offers a window into the role social media plays in the lives of today’s youth and how it shapes the ideals and insecurities of girls in particular. Girls are experiencing high levels of sadness and hopelessness. Whether social media exposure causes or simply correlates with mental health problems is up for debate. But to older teens and young adults, it’s clear: Extended time on social media has been bad for them, period.
not enough people in this thread are condemning the actual root problem, which is the socially constructed bullshit standard of "if you look like you're over 35, then no one wants anything to do with you." especially if you're a woman. it's been this way for many generations. way before social media or influencers.
While you're right about the beauty standards the actual root problem here is
Thank your shitty parents, girl. They don't give a shit what you do.
I'll get abuse for this, but there's no escaping the fact that the other root problem in this is seriously shit parenting
How dare you tell the truth!
that's true, but shitty parenting has been a problem since pretty much the beginning. ever read the bible? good parents will raise kids with enough confidence and self respect to not feel like they have to "modify" themselves to an excessive degree just to show their face in public
I agree with your points here but i think access to social media is exposing youth to that standard and the aceess to the products at an earlier age. This effect could also bleed into men in the sense of their standards for beauty become more unrealslistic as the top models are all they want on their screens.
I don't think it is unreasonable to expect women to have the bodies of a 20 year old while displaying the intelligence and maturity of someone past their early 30s.
You either made an oopsie while writing this sentence, or you’re a real piece of shit.
It's not social media that is the problem. It's capitalism. Social media is no different from the snake oil sales person, door to door sales people or Avon parties of the past. The problem is that kids aren't educated about how to deal with capitalistic greed that will do everything to convince you something is wrong with you in order to sell you the cure and are then allowed access to the Internet without that education. And the sales people don't face any consequences for marketing to children because they just pretend not to know and don't have to look them in the eye, so it's easier to be unethical without consequence.
Both things can be a problem simultaneously 🌈
The algorithm is working as intended.
What the fucking fuck are parents doing? Encouraging this shit?
Scrolling their Insta rather than parenting.
This worldwide obsession with anti-aging is a plague. It has to fucking stop. Everytime I hear someone calling women over 30 "old hags", I can't help the feeling that they're pedophiles. Just let girls age normally, for fuck's sake!
Knowing how expensive these products are, how can a ten y.o. afford them? And on top how can parents not have a clue what she is spending her money on?
Kids should be allowed a level of privacy and should be allowed to make mistakes. Otherwise we're raising kids who don't understand what conseqences really are.
That said, the parents don't seem to be discussing important things with their daughter here ... like how fucking stupid and dangerous TikTok really can be (and often is).
Don't know about you, but preteen me wouldn't be very impressed by an adult saying something as vague as "it can be dangerous". We understand the danger and even then fall victim to it in some way or other, how can we expect a child to navigate that landscape of insecurities and marketing in any healthy way.
The answer is we can't and we're all suckers for letting predatory marketing techniques such as influencers and highly targeted ads run rampant in our daily lives.
This is the danger of allowing unregulated media, entertainment and advertisement towards children. She didn’t come up with these ideas on her own. She was actively pursued and encouraged to do this by YouTube children entertainers and advertisers. They did it for profit and will do it again, then blame parents and governments for letting them do it.
Never before have businesses had this much direct access to children. They see it as a great market. They are easy to manipulate, uniformed and highly sensitive. These are the reasons we limited who, when and what could be advertised to them in the past. It was much easier with TV.
Which is also a problem because we can't have adult spaces either. Every time someone tries, they get shut down or all attempts to keep kids out are fruitless. At this point I think everyone would benefit from robust ways of enforcing age limits online.
Personally I think this needs to be at the device level. You can register a device as: child, teen, adult. Every website can query the device age group. The device age is set by a process that verifies ID through a trusted party. Only that party knows your identity, everyone else simply knows your age group. Child and teen devices would be tied to an adult account and only they could override or update the classification (or a valid adult ID works too).
Then it would put liability on the parent for allowing their kids access to adult content. Websites not checking for this info that abuse it can be shut down.
No, the people targeting children in the adverts and entertainment should face criminal prosecution.
They know they’re targeting children, they want to target children and they already use methods to attempt to get over what protections are in place.
Google have expressly told advertiser, that they can target children is they go after unknown users.
The only people watching most of the content are children and the mentally handicapped. Most adults would find it too annoying. The people creating it know this. Prime drinks are an example of this, the groups associated with it regularly discuss topic and use humour that inappropriate for children and often plays with sexist, racist and intolerant themes. They wanted to sell alcoholic drinks with their branding, but realised there was no market for it because most of their viewers are under 12.
Nope.
I don’t want anyone verifying my identity for any reason other than government or financial business, where there is a legitimate reason to do so. There is absolutely no reason some random-ass company needs access of any sort to my demographic information, when I am a legal adult doing things well within my rights to do. Especially if this thing was automated to feed that data without my consent or knowledge, as you are suggesting. Absolutely fuck all of that. Plus that would mean there’s a central query database of all the sites you’ve ever accessed for any reason, and that’s fucking scary, even if you aren’t doing anything wrong.
This wouldn’t work any better than any other privacy-leaky method anyway. People hand down phones to their kids a lot without factory resetting them. And stolen IDs/identity theft are a thing. And you don’t think that central identity bank would be prime target #1 for hackers? If the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that companies WILL NOT protect your data properly, and they WILL NOT suffer consequences of any sort when (not if, when) there is a breach.
At the end of the day, ensuring someone else’s kids don’t have access to something said parent doesn’t want them to access…? Not my problem, and absolutely not a good enough reason to violate my privacy that thoroughly.
You act like these companies don't already have your identity anyway. Google, Apple, Microsoft. They know exactly who you are. The idea is that those mega corps who already handle identity information are in a better position to be a 3rd party witness to other, less trustworthy websites to say 'yes this person is an adult'. So you don't have to give that random website any personal info.
I'd have suggested the government fulfill this role, but people would freak out way more about that.
It's absolutely affecting you though. Basically every where online is now 'family friendly' because it's impossible to create adult spaces online. You can't keep the kids out no matter what you do. And that's bringing everything down to the lowest common denominator and trying to cram the entire gamut of human interactions down into a single, heavily censored experience. It's why censorship has gotten completely out of control. Something needs to change or we'll app be stuck with PG spaces for 10 year olds forever.
Sure, they might know my identity. But very importantly, they aren’t every single random company out there whose website I happen to briefly access for whatever reason. They don’t need to know anything about me, and they shouldn’t.
I can’t do anything about big tech companies knowing things about me, tho I do try to limit it when I can, but not literally everyone needs to know who I am just because I want to access their content. That’s absolutely absurd.
It definitely isn’t impacting me in the slightest. Idk what you do with your time, but I don’t really want my platforms to be unmoderated cesspools, and the places I do choose to exist or use are in line with what I want, so.. meh. It’s literally not an issue I have.
Breweries and bars in my area are often kid-friendly with toys and everything, and I just don’t go to those places. I do the same with online spaces. They aren’t meant for me if they aren’t what I’m looking for, so I don’t go. There’s plenty of places that are for me, though, and I go to those places on and offline.
No. Let's not start requiring people to register computers like they are guns or something.
wtf
Could not have said it better
“My dear fellow, having thoroughly and carefully read the missive above, I remain at once incredulous and scandalised regarding the weight and severity of not only the perilous issue at hand, but also, moreover, the brief and tender youth of those involved. I would like to make it known to the assembled, that this is a state of affairs I cannot long endure - and I would like, nay hope, to consider that all those in this room (sic) with me here, now, would join me in condemning such practices, utterly, and in the most damning and contemptuble fashion - to wit, the only gloss remaining uncharted is an utteration of the simplest kind, crass in its execution, that reminds me somewhat of a dear friend of mine who - in the latter days of nineteen ninety eight, a fine year, when involved in some damnable tussle at a considerable height, cast another gentleman from the parapet and himself plunged a scarcely believable sixteen feet through an announcers table”
you get half an updoot for the shittymorph reference
i'm okay with this as the evolution of shittymorph memes
Why would someone aged 10 or 11 ever think, even for one moment, that anti-aging products (any, whatsoever, at all!) are something they might need?!
"kids shouldn't be on the Internet" "we need to regulate social media" "we need to ban the sale of this or that to young people" blahblahblah - no, we apparently need to teach kids basic common sense, such as that if you aren't even fully grown yet, you definitely do not need anti-aging products
Of course kids don't have basic common sense. It develops with experience and from the things we teach them. That's why you don't leave them on social media completely unsupervised. They learn stupid shit from influencers because they don't have any filters yet.
There is a reason kids don't have full rights. Don't judge them like they're adults. It's our responsibility to protect them.
Yeah at age 10 you'll believe anything people will put in your brain, it's crazy that the parents let that shit happen
Armchair judgement of children being children up in here.
Anti-aging influencers like Peter Pan told them already long time ago.
Vanity doesnt have an age limit. Kids are the most impressionable members of society no matter how jaded they act. It is our adult duty to shepherd them as they learn and not condemn them for the experience or lack thereof
Wow, that tops the most dystopian headline… for the day.
Poor girl. Nobody using that stuff looks young. People are manipulated so heavily that they are not able to see that it’s BS.
This is why you patch test things, everyone's skin is unique
But she shouldn't be using them in the first place at that age
Also is it confirmed that I was a skincare product and not a coincidentally timed medical issue, because medical issues should be ruled out instead of going unnoticed
Patch testing likely wouldn't have made a difference, this is about extended use that probably broke down her skin's barrier over time.
When I had a baby and then got COVID, I started washing my hands more often, and really too often. Using the same gentle non scented antibacterial soap I had been for years, I turned my hands into a dry cracked and bleeding mess, and when I used the same gentle non scented oatmeal moisturizer I have used for years, I ended up with insane burning on the backs of my hands, and a bright red burn/rash. This was all in about a week.
I stopped using hot water to wash, and only used soap on my palms/fingers. I waited for my skin to repair itself. Now I continue to use that same soap and lotion with no problem. It was never the products that were the problem, it was over use.
I like crow's feet. I like smile wrinkles. I like gray hair. I like stretch marks.
Just because people say these are bad doesn't mean there aren't an abundance of people who like them
Using anti-aging products at a young age will have the opposite effect because of increased exposure to different irritants in various products. Whatever you use isn’t necessarily good for your skin, esp if it causes inflammation. But ime the best anti-aging is eating healthy and exercise.
I mean, yeah, it's awful, but why did they use a picture of some woman in her fourties as the article banner?
reminds me of that brain rot drink Prime. Still surprised to this day how a fucking energy drink became a sensation among 10 year olds. probably wonders of social media.
You got Cred!?
Prime in particular is one of the most disgusting things I have ever consumed. The texture is like someone spit in a cup. I am a total energy drink addict, but prime makes no fucking sense to me.
Is that the crap that has the Ice pop flavor? The people I know at a local sports group drink it like it's liquefied candy at halloween. These folks range from middle-aged to retirees. The effects of its advertising in my parents' age group are apparent and it is just as insidious as in the young children.
probably, it has all sorts of weird flavors and targets anyone else other than adult sports drink consumers despite being the most caffeinated sports drink
Boomers were very heavily propagandized.
I work at a university and have long seen Prime carried around. Only a few days ago I learned that Mr Beast owns it and is being heavily sued for bad behavior.
Mr beast does not own it. Its two other influencers Logan sth and another guy. If he collaborated with them or bought it later, I don't know. Also I dont know if Mr Beast is being sued because of bad behaviour but he is being sued for failing some contractual obligations. He is also suing some other people who called him out for being a sociopath.
This falls solely on the parents for letting her do that to herself.
This is also the fault of gov'ts who don't crack down on businesses and advertisers who target kids.
At this rate unfettered capitalism is gonna kill us all, sooner rather than later.
No sick of that shit. This 100% on her parents. No way a 10 year old was buying all that junk. Government doesn't need to police every goddamm thing.
Darwinsim needs to make a come back. Probably why we have so many stupid fucking people in this world. Because we have to me warnings and Government over reach.
Who ever her Guardians are should have warned her or not provided these products.
You don't want the government to police advertisements to kids, like we already do with television.
Instead, you think Darwinism should police them with death? Really?
I guess. But if the parents just explained why doing that is bad and maybe prohibited her from doing it, it would not have gone this badly. Sure the cause is not the parents fault directly. But by their inaction they contributed more than tiktok.
You have no idea how kids work.
I know that doing literally anything is better than inaction when your kid is destroying themselves.
The article does not mention what interventions the parents tried. But no, just doing something is not always better than being patient - especially with kids.
Not in detail, but it actually does:
While younger kids may be reasoned with, teenagers aren't as easy to handle as some say. Puberty is a hell of a drug.
10-year-olds have allowances. They can walk down the street to the drugstore or supermarket if they live in a city. The parents may not have known.
Aww man, squiddy you know this argument is specious. Yes children have allowances, but popular beauty products are expensive even by adult standards. For a kid to have access to the beauty products in question in the referenced quantities suggests a serious lack of parental oversight coupled with an undue and unchecked influence from predatory apps like tiktok. While yeah it's not toally in the realm of the X-Files for a child to develop a makeup addiction, I think it's much more likely that this is a case of severe parental neglect being overblown for clickbait than a serious social epidemic.
well there is always a cheap and crappy version of whatever beauty product you are looking for and those are even more likely to cause harm. But I imagine if a kid is trying to apply ten different skin care products a day, even a slightly attentive parent would notice in time.
Sure, and I won't deny that there's a problem to be addressed here. I just don't think it's the problem that's being implied in the article. When I was in highschool, several classmates had severe skin problems caused by trying to use a homemade clorox paste to 'erase' their freckles. Another guy was hospitalized for trying to use 'comet' as a tooth whitening solution (my highschool also had a problem with cows from the neighboring pastures wandering in to eat the flowers in the planters, though, so maybe it's not the best example to use here. They learned how to use the wheelchair buttons. The ranhers eventually dug a ditch to stop them, which didn't stop the cows wandering but did provide a place for people to go and have sex during school hours. Yeah, it was a 'sex ditch' highschool. What was I talking about.)
My point is that children are idiots, have always been idiots and are always going to be idiots. I love them, and they're much smarter than most people give them credit for, but still. The real issue here isn't that they're finding new and different ways in which to be idiots, but that parents aren't willing (or more likely, aren't able due to time, money or social pressures) to provide enough oversight to prevent said childhood dumbassery. The underlaying issues here are way more complex than 'tiktok bad', and those are what need addressing. Confiscating smartphones from kids (as some people here seem almost gleeful to advocate) is just a socially convenient way to not take responsibility for actually parenting your children, and denies them a vital tool for interacting with the modern world. It does far more harm than good. A fifteen minute conversation about the strategies tiktok uses to influence them will have more positive benefit on their lives than taking away their phones ever, ever would.
Great points.
Vaping is another example. Despite being aged restricted, kids still get their hands on vapes.
I don't understand why parents (or guardians) let their children have a smartphone when everyone is aware of the many threats that can be encountered on these devices.
They think they are being nice. It was a long time ago, but my mum tried to give my kids smartphones when they were 6 and 4. She couldn't understand why I made her take them back and wouldn't talk to me for months.
You can give a kid a smartphone and monitor their use of it. There's even software that can help you out if you don't want to just do it the old-fashioned way by looking with your eyes.
IMHO, this is a very sensitive topic, and I'm glad I don't have kids for this to be a worry for me.
Smartphones became a big thing when I was already in high school, and social media at the time still wasn't this aggressive, but my father did monitor my activity on the PC, mostly secretly, and it made me feel anxious. This violation of privacy damaged my already shit/barely existent relationship with him. It's also why I'm so paranoid of secretly being monitored. You have to already have a pretty good relationship with your parents for this not to potentially mess you up, at least in my experience.
What the solution to this is, I don't know. Better digital/tech education in schools and at home would be a good step in that direction, but strict ad and product regulations should also be implemented, which - unfortunately expectedly - is being fought against (at least in the USA, according to the article).
The secretly part is the issue. We did not make it a secret. When my daughter was 11, she got a cell phone because at that point all of her friends had them. But we told her that we would monitor her use. She knew about it, so she didn't feel anxious about it (and she has major anxiety problems). At this point, at 14, we feel we can trust her to be responsible and don't monitor anymore. But we do still talk to her about what she sees.
Were we able to block her from absolutely everything that might have been risky? Probably not. But I think we avoided most of it while trying to educate her on safe behavior.
Oh get a grip. There's repercussions to being socially isolated from your peers, as well. I'd argue the consequences to denying a child a fundemental means of social interaction is more harmful than tiktok, even with the latter's long history of bastardry. The blame for these problems lies far more at the feet of absentee parenting than it does "children having smartphones".
Oh, hard disagree. Tiktok isn't used just to connect with peers and any child claiming it is is lying. It's a global app tailored to feed you content that keeps you engaged and challenges your self worth until you start responding to the ads and sponsored content forced on you. If kids need to socialise they don't need tiktok, they need messaging apps like whatsapp or imessage or signal. Ways to stay in touch exclusively with people who you actually do socialise with.
I'm sorry, I'm confused what you're hard disagreeing about. So the existance of one predatory app means smartphones themselves must be avoided? Or just that parents should be restricting their kids access to tiktok? Because if it's the latter than I very much agree, my point is that denying kids access to smartphones as a whole does more harm to them (by preventing them social interaction with their peers) than the harm done by possibly allowing them to also see tiktok.
Specifically this.
I think being socially isolated is better than exposing kids to tiktok or other social media designed to farm engagement from them.
Of course I said they should be allowed to access WhatsApp and other forms of communication so I'm not advocating for a blanket ban on phones. But it should also be stated:
(I swear to god I'm not trying to be antagonistic here, I just really like hearing myself talk: )
I think what you're saying is that, taken in a vacuum, exposure to tiktok is a net negative vs. not having access to tiktok. And I think that from a certain perspective you could very well be correct. I also think you've misunderstood me; when I said 'socially isolated' I was referring to the near-total social isolation that comes with being unable to access the internet as a modern youth, not just 'not being able to use tiktok', which I should perhaps have caught on to and clarified earlier. I agree that tiktok is, on the whole, better for a person not to use. I think we're broadly in agreement here, though I'm a advocate of the 'all things in moderation' school of thought, and a firm supporter of harm reduction (please don't jeer too much...).
There's two things I'd like to say, though. The first is that there is no possible way to objectively assess a means of socialization on a Best <> Worst scale, nor is there a way to identify what a 'personal element' is. I'm going to assume, hopefully correctly, that you're in the 20+ age bracket here, and that you did not grow up with digital communication as a particularly large segment of your childhood social interaction. Assuming this lets me point to it as a very reasonable explanation of why you've wound up at the conclusion that human interaction has anything built-in, because alternative forms of communication were extremely niche until the "digital revolution" that the millennials and zoomers have experienced growing up.
Human interaction is a wholly learned behavior, one that we get the foundations for during childhood and then find incredibly difficult (or nigh impossible) to re-learn as adults. The reality we are facing (haha) is that children who primarily communicate digitally have developed tone indicators and expressions wholly alien to people unused to the medium. They aren't missing out on a chunk of human interaction, they're just interacting differently than what used to be the norm. They may be worse at face to face communication, but that is getting less and less important as we transition to a more connected society. Wholly denying them experience with an entire segment of how people relate and communicate can, I hope you agree, be nothing but detrimental to them.
As a real world example:
I teach computer science (in my copious spare time...), and when I talk to my students I have to be very conscious of the background they have with a given medium. Many students, ones that did not grow up with the internet or older students especially, I have to be much more careful about communicating my meaning when sending them a message because the tone indicators I and my younger / digitally hipper students take for granted just aren't noticed by people unfamiliar with them. By the same token, many in-person conversations I have require me to be very careful to ensure that body language cues are not missed by those less comfortable with them. It's a careful line to walk, and overall the students who are familiar with both easily do the best in our courses.
The second thing is, predictably, that all things should be taken in moderation.
Yes, society is transitioning how we primarily interact with each other. No, that doesn't mean learning how to interact in person is no longer important. I primarily interact with my partner digitally, even though much of our time spent together is in the same room, but there certainly are discussions where it's much easier to accurately communicate meaning face-to-face. Now admittedly she's deeply autistic so perhaps she isn't the best example I could use here, but still. Children spending 100% of their time on their phone or on their computer obviously isn't healthy (I say, hypocritically), and I doubt you'd find a single person that would claim that it is. But by the same reasoning, they shouldn't be spending 100% of their time in total digital abstinence. The times, they are a-changing, and neglecting to learn how to communicate effectively is bad no matter what the medium (I again say hypocritically, staring down a 724 word essay on a tiny lemmy thread maybe two people will ever read...)
Lol, I read it !
so you think it's complicated, but also it's just absentee parenting. have you always been this way, or were you ever a teenager? getting away from the parents is what kids want. some parents are super successful at avoiding this, so good on them. some parents are working all the damn time to feed their kids, so yeah. they're absent.
Everything is complicated, but I'm not going to argue against the idea that the blame lies at least partially with the socioeconomic realities facing modern parents that result in absentee parenting. Its just, the way you presented this feels like you're trying to argue against my point, but your argument is in agreement. I'm confused.
so what is it you are arguing for?
The negative results of denying a child acess to the most common means of modern social interaction (a smartphone) are much more severe than the potential harm caused by allowing them to also have possible access to predatory apps like tiktok, and that active parenting will mitigate even that potential harm.
you are still just arguing, but you don't have any idea how to fix the known problem. neither do i.
I was answering your question, the one you asked about what my arguments were. The one you asked in response to me agreeing with you, and asking how we were disagreeing. Hence reiterating my arguments. Thus far this hasn't been an argument so much as it has been an agreement.
I have plenty of solutions, too, they just havent come up yet. Most of them center around support for parents, either financially or emotionally, and increased education/awareness both for parents and children about online advertising, critical thinking and personal due diligence. Additionally, and this is wishful thinking I admit, an expansion of protections regulating advertising content that can be shown to children.
you should just say that. in a more compelling way. what you said is not going to do it, though I agree. no cares what we think about tiktok.
Excepting the fact that I work in public policy research, you may have a point.
All you young people need to know you're gorgeous just as you are. You don't need products to make yourself beautiful, don't believe the advertising.
Nah, I was ugly as shit when I was young too
Isnt the only actual good shit retinol?
The only good shit is coming to terms with the inevitable passage of time and to not stigmatize the process of aging. We'll all get wrinkles eventually, get used to it.
I'm fine with getting wrinkles and I still keep my skincare going. When I don't, my skin gets very dry and fills with pimples.
There's a middle ground here.
Yes and if not used properly can be really dangerous too IIRC
It can destroy your skin and your liver even when used properly.Edit:nm I’m thinking of an acne drug.
I am absolutely positive reddit will spin this as white cis male's fault.
I am absolutely positive that reading this comment was a white cis male's fault.
Kids are becoming incredibly dumb, that's a problem. Why are kids so dumb nowadays and what can be done ?
Maybe send bad parents to prison for being so bad at parenting that they allow 10 year olds to touch computers and watch poisonous advertisements ?