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.
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!
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 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 🌈
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).
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!
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
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
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 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.
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.
Boomers were very heavily propagandized.
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.
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”.
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
wtf
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:
“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.
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.
