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
By the time she turned 10, Scarlett and her friends were spending hours on TikTok and YouTube
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.
Yeah, good point. They should also be totally attracted to older men and if they are with a younger guy less critical of their immaturity. And hair that is like normal hair but doesn’t clog up the drains.
And a looooooooooooooong jacket.
Wow. What makes you say that?
Virginity
The algorithm is working as intended.
Skin care was not on Mia’s radar until she started eighth grade last fall. It was a topic of conversation among girls her age — at school and on social media. Girls bonded over their skin care routines.
The beauty industry has been cashing in on the trend. Last year, consumers under age 14 drove 49% of drug store skin sales, according to a NielsonIQ report that found households with teens and tweens were outspending the average American household on skin care.
What the fucking fuck are parents doing? Encouraging this shit?
Scrolling their Insta rather than parenting.
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.
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 🌈
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.
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
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.
No. Let’s not start requiring people to register computers like they are guns or something.
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.
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,
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.
Poor girl. Nobody using that stuff looks young. People are manipulated so heavily that they are not able to see that it’s BS.
Wow, that tops the most dystopian headline… for the day.
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
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 mean, yeah, it’s awful, but why did they use a picture of some woman in her fourties as the article banner?
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 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
