Who’s to blame for tweens and teens’ obsession with anti-aging skin care products?

For one 15-year-old girl in 2024, some of the everyday problems she posts to her 10,000-plus followers on TikTok sound similar to any teenager's from any generation. The girl, who will remain unidentified here given her status as a minor, tries on different outfits for a concert, stresses about going to her sophomore year Spanish class and documents her excitement about being able to eat at a restaurant with friends and no parental supervision.

She also has insecurities and posts about those, too. In one video from her freshman year of high school, she asks, “Why am I starting to get lines on my forehead?” and hashtags “premature wrinkles” in her caption. The video has 5.6 million views.

“SAME,” another user comments. “Im gonna look 30 when im 20 at this rate.”

It’s all part of a growing fixation on anti-aging skin care from tweens and teenagers who have barely experienced puberty, let alone aging. From

A quick scroll through the comments and it’s mostly other young high school students agreeing with her. Some recommend applying mascara in a specific way to avoid raising eyebrows or training herself not to be so expressive when talking to friends.

It’s all part of a growing fixation on anti-aging skincare from tweens and teenagers who have barely experienced puberty, let alone aging. From “get ready with me” (GRWM) videos and Christmas hauls to Sephora employees reacting on TikTok, the discussion around allowing young kids to participate in the skin care economy is exploding.

“This is not surprising, it's not shocking. Anyone who's paid attention to beauty culture and how it's been shifting over the past five to 10 years could have probably predicted this,” beauty reporter Jessica DeFino told Yahoo News. “This is exactly how beauty culture works. This is exactly how social media consumption works.”

Someone in their 30s today may remember using a facial cleanser and moisturizer at most when they were teenagers. Ten-year-olds arguably weren’t asking beauty counters for niacinamide serums, especially not with perfect pronunciation. Retinol, a popular anti-aging medication, used to need a doctor’s prescription — now you can buy a product containing the ingredient for $8 in cute, intentionally photograph-worthy packaging.

“This level of obsession was not here in the '80s, for example, because the products didn't exist, or at least they didn't exist for the average person,” DeFino explained. “There are so many anti-aging skin care products now available at all different types of price points anywhere you go, from drugstore to super high-end luxury.”

Dr. Daniel Yamini, a board-certified plastic surgeon at the Visthetic Surgery Institute & MedSpa in Beverly Hills, told Yahoo News that a general rule of thumb for even considering anti-aging products is waiting until someone is in their late 20s or early 30s. But even then, he says, aging is unique to every person and dependent on several factors.

“Using anti-aging products too early in life may have some potential downsides,” Yamini added, emphasizing that a lot of the products use strong and reactive ingredients. Younger skin, which is more sensitive, can get easily irritated, and a lot of newer anti-aging products haven’t been studied for long enough to fully understand the long-term effects.

Yamini also emphasized the importance of consulting with a skin care professional. Beauty culture and social media have loosened who is defined as an “expert” on the topic. Content creators are now considered by some as trusted guides, even if they’re working with specific beauty brands.

“I feel like when I was growing up, there were dedicated spaces in the media for like tweens and teens,” DeFino said, naming kids’ cable channels like Nickelodeon and Disney as examples, as well as publications like Teen Vogue and Seventeen.

“Everyone of all ages is on Instagram and TikTok, and we're all being marketed the same products. So these teens and tweens are being exposed to marketing for much older women and adopting these behaviors much younger,” she said.

But who is at fault here? A lot of social media reactions, for the most part, seem to shift the blame onto the tweens and teenagers themselves. Charlotte Palermino, the CEO and co-founder of beauty brand Dieux, told Yahoo News she started noticing adults were doing TikTok duets with some of these young kids and mocking them for their routines.

“Children already have enough to deal with being online: facing dysmorphia, parasocial relationships, unrealistic expectations of how life is lived by being constantly exposed to people’s highlight reels,” she said. “Are we really going to mock them for parroting content that mimics what adults are praised for?”

What about the parents? DeFino coined the term “Serum Mom,” a play on “Almond Mom,” the term used to refer to parents who are obsessed with health and weight who then pass those anxieties onto their children. For Serum Moms, DeFino says, it’s the parents who are recommending Drunk Elephant products for their young kids or who encourage their young 20-something children to try Botox or filler.

“To me, the definition of a Serum Mom is not examining your own obsession and beauty behaviors and how beauty culture has affected you, and just passing it on to your kid,” she said.

Despite the headlines that say this is a new trend among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, it’s not, she said. Yes, while there is more access to more beauty products now than ever before, DeFino argues that it’s “old behavior” repackaged.

“How old were you when you started playing in your mother's makeup? How old were you when you started walking around the house in her heels? I feel like these are normal, developmental things,” she said. “The behavior isn't new, but the culture we have today is set up to make it a bigger problem that affects more people in more harmful ways faster.”