The Christmas wishlist Keshara’s daughter handed her in 2023 bore little resemblance to ones from years gone by. This time, there were no requests for toys. Instead, her child had made an extensive, meticulous list of skincare products: expensive eye-creams, anti-ageing serums, drops and oils with ingredients like retinol and polypeptides. One of the items, a Drunk Elephant eye serum to target “fine lines and wrinkles and reduce puffiness”, retails at £56. Keshara’s daughter is nine.
“I asked how she knew about them – she said it was all on TikTok, and everyone knows about it,” Keshara said. “I told her, no way, you’re really too young, it’s not appropriate and really expensive.”
Keshara, a 36-year-old care home worker in Stirling, soon learned she was not alone in fielding elaborate requests for high-end skincare products from her child. When she bumped into other parents at Superdrug in the run-up to Christmas, they told her that “all of a sudden their 10-year-old daughters want really expensive products they’ve seen on Instagram and TikTok”.
Dermatologists have cautioned that children were being influenced on social media, warning that anti-ageing products designed for adults could harm children’s sensitive skin. While Keshara’s daughter is not on social media herself, she watches TikTok videos on YouTube and when with friends.
The 36-year-old instead bought her daughter some cheaper products designed for sensitive skin and gave her one of her own SPF moisturisers to use. Despite always having hated early mornings, these days, the nine-year-old often wakes up at 6am to do her skincare regimen before school, and spends an hour on it each evening.
“She has regular Google meetings with her friends where she’s talking about products and about influencers I have no idea about,” said Keshara. “She uses language about prevention. She says, ‘If I don’t have it, my skin’s going to have issues’ and ‘The sooner you start the better’, because she’s heard it online. We’ve told her you can’t believe everything you see online … If they’re trying to sell a product they’ll say anything.”
Whereas the nine-year-old had always been fascinated by makeup, her mother is concerned that her interest in beauty has recently intensified. “Her interest in skincare has [become] more about beauty enhancement and ‘fixing’ trouble areas than just fun. I’m worried that as my daughter reaches pre-puberty she is facing a greater amount of pressure placed on females and young people to look perfect and will feel the strain on her self-esteem.”
Meanwhile, Sarah’s 13-year-old daughter, who had never seemed interested in skincare before, also asked for an extensive list of products for Christmas, including items from Sol De Janeiro and Drunk Elephant. After a chat with another mother, who had been given a similar list, she bought her a Sol De Janeiro body cream and a body mist, but drew the line at other items. “These are products I wouldn’t buy for myself, they’re too expensive. And I don’t think it’s healthy for a 13-year-old to spend an hour on her beauty regimen,” said Sarah, who is 45 and works in HR in Surrey.
But after her daughter went shopping with friends in the January sales, she came home with more products, including an eye cream. “She doesn’t think she needs it, I think she’s just copying.”
Sarah believes there is a social component to her daughter’s newfound interest in skincare. “It gives her a common interest with friends. I think they’re very attracted to the way the packaging looks, the pastel colours.” Her daughter and her friends “spend hours on FaceTime calls organising the products on shelves, putting them on and chatting about them”. Each evening, she uses two makeup removers, cleanser, moisturiser, eye cream, and sometimes face masks and jade rollers.
“I worry about the self-analysing and constantly comparing,” Sarah said. “I can see how it sets you on a path where you become obsessed with what you look like – I worry it will lead to anxiety about looks and weight.”
And it is not just young girls. On a trip to London last summer, Kate’s 14-year-old son insisted he needed retinol. “At first I had no idea what retinol was – then I said it’s something I should be using not him,” Kate, 55, said. “He was very insistent that he needed it and only changed his mind when a stranger stopped to back up what I was saying – that is was completely unnecessary for a child to use anti-ageing products.”
Kate, from Hampshire, said her son became interested in skincare when he was 12, and uses products for moisturising and exfoliating, and lately, an essential oil marketed as preventing hair loss, despite not needing it.
She believes it started with social media, where he consumes self-improvement content. “He works out at gym, has read lots of self-improvement books, and YouTube,” she said, adding that he is on Snapchat and Instagram, but deleted TikTok and stopped gaming as part of his efforts to “better” himself. “I supported it in moderation, while advising him not to go too far.
“I’m glad he’s interested in taking care of himself – there’s so many worse things he could be doing. But it’s worrying that children are getting the message that they need [products] they don’t need. It’s quite disturbing that children are being made to think they need it.”
