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.
wtf
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.
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.
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.
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:
“Often the mothers are saying exactly what I am but need their child to hear it from an expert,” says Dr. Dendy Engelman, a Manhattan dermatologist. “They’re like, ‘Maybe she’ll listen to you because she certainly doesn’t listen to me.’”
While younger kids may be reasoned with, teenagers aren’t as easy to handle as some say. Puberty is a hell of a drug.
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.
Who ever her Guardians are should have warned her or not provided these products.
Maybe they did warn her, or didn’t directly provide the products, kids are a bit more complicated most of the time.
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.
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.
It seems like a crazy vanity project to actually spend a lot of time/money/resources on buying time for this crap. If someone doesn’t have some crows eye thingies, it often means they basically never smile and laugh
Fuck that haha
Retinol and sunscreen.
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 y and 4. She couldn’t understand why I made her take them back and wouldn’t talk to me for months.
How old is y?
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I am absolutely positive reddit will spin this as white cis male’s fault.
