Young And Obsessed: The Skin Care Drama

What started with ‘basics,’ has turned into a 10-step skincare routine today. With a lavish range of skincare products (some gifts from her aunt in Dubai and some local), Vidhi expresses a special fondness for the Korean Beauty range.

Citing issues such as dark circles (hereditary), pigmentation, and acne, she describes the current process of engaging in her skincare practice as “relaxing, reassuring” and something that helps her “combat basic insecurities and feel good about herself”.

Vidhi is a 12-year-old girl from Kolkata.

What could be lying beneath the mind of a 12-year-old child who has already fallen into the trap of an ostensible perfect skin?

When asked about the moment which drove her initiation to the beauty world, she recalls: “Skincare, it came around when I was in Ahmedabad, where I lived for some time. I kind of let go of myself completely. I would do basic hygiene practices, but I would get a lot of acne. Basically, pimples that would kind of drive me crazy.”

Talking about the sources which guide her purchases, she mentions: “I research like ‘actual websites’. I definitely watch social media, but I try to not let it influence what I think about it.”

This is not just the story of one but thousands of such young children, pointing towards an onset of new victims of the year old ‘ageing’ and ‘younger-and-brighter’ looking skin gimmick, which has kept women in a chokehold.

While Vidhi has recently started her anonymous skincare recommendations and reviews page on Instagram, there are many other creators in the similar age group who are influencers or content creators on the platform. @happyskincaringg, aka Divya Agarwal, is one such Instagram handle which is run by a 19-year-old law student of NMIMS Bangalore, with 54.7K followers.

Explaining how she entered into the domain of creating beauty content, she recalls starting the journey very young, when she was 15 or 16 years old during the Covid period, where she had a lot of time in hand and stumbled upon some YouTube videos from creators like James Welsh. Fascinated by the skincare wave outside, she started her own journey and experimented with products.

Interestingly, the phenomenon of the “Sephora 10-Year Olds” or “Sephora Teens” in the United States is testament to this frightening shift of perception, and an apparent byproduct of the unrestricted content consumption which consumes lives of children today. This unusual viral trend raised alarms as children around the age of 10 starting ‘taking over’ stores for expensive makeup and skincare, becoming consumers of high-end beauty products and occasionally posting videos of their hauls and consequent skincare routines.

Aware of this trend in the US, Vidhi’s mother expressed her own concerns about the social media algorithms and the lack of any means to control the kind of content that reaches her daughter, who she describes as “next level obsessed” with skincare. She says, “I don’t think any teenager is as much into skincare as my daughter is.”

While skincare is at the centre of their “mother and daughter bonding time” at home (where the daughter guides her mother with a multiple-steps skincare routine), she also points at the flip side of the situation. She admits having healthy scepticism and hopes that this doesn’t age her child.

In the case of teenagers’ exposure to widely available content in this day, Kaur emphasises that different media channels have long shaped the trends, dating back to newspapers to reels today.

“There is a shift almost every 10 years with respect to trends that shape society. With AI and advanced algorithms, this change has fastened, and it is these social media and AI advancements which stitch the narrative and reality for us now,” she adds.

In reference to access to data online, Kaur wants to probe into the sources and the extent of the ‘research’, including the bias that may overshadow a child’s judgment.

Meenu Malik, a consultant dermatologist, shares similar opinion and says: “There is such a widespread access to data today, including paid journals. In such cases, the authenticity of the research hinders.”

Referring to the initial days of her journey, she recollects an instance where due to her vulnerability to misinformation, she ended up using ‘essential oils’ which, in turn, caused a great deal of harm to the skin, leading to huge boils on her face.

In reference to such incidences, Simran Kaur, a counselling psychologist and the founder of Serene Lives, points towards potential underlying reasonings for some things that go beyond the need for self-care.

She says: “While one cannot point to a singular cause without thorough examination, there are certain possibilities to explain such a case. One reason might be underlying social anxiety, which puts extreme focus on looks, where skin becomes non-negotiable. Another reason might be inclined towards a gradually developed obsessive behaviour where one needs to ask, what if the access to that self-care practice is taken away from the child.”

Furthermore, she also goes on to highlight the importance of tracing the narrative which goes around amongst the peers, in person as well as on social media platforms.

She continues: “Not every product works for everyone, in children as well as in adults. Despite being clinically proven, some products do not work on certain people. Such generalisation based on a particular product or ingredient is not appropriate. This is where the role of customisation or an expert plays an important role.”

Vidhi, nevertheless, has a different approach to the subject. While on one hand, she says: “I know actives are bad for my skin,” on the other, she adds: “but I think it’s kind of normal for kids to be interested in skin care.” Her ‘normal’ in this case seems to be pointing to a fabricated reality which is a likely product of the intersection between capitalism and social media platforms.

Confessing her lack of knowledge around the subject, Vidhi’s mother shared how internet serves as an impetus to confusion rather than clarity on the subject. “Parents like myself are super confused,” she notes.

Taking advantage of this void, the brands are able to grow on the fertile ground provided by social media, where influencers bring in trust and “community,” one of the reasons cited by Vidhi when asked about the pulling factors contributing towards her keen interest in skincare. Her mother echoed concerns regarding such a merger of commercial with ‘so-called’ education.

In an attempt to navigate through the situation and “to channel her boundless energy into something,” the parents encouraged their daughter to translate her interest into something “productive,” which in this case was starting her own skincare brand. The mother perceives it as an attempt to “pull the child out from being a consumer and putting her into creating something out of the research.”

While Vidhi treads that path, her mother expresses uncertainty in the execution or end result of the same.

When asked about the scariest thing with regards to this journey as a mother, she says: “It doesn't scare me till she is communicating. What scares me is at some point she will stop communicating and then I’ll have a problem. Today I know what she is thinking about and as a parent it’s important to try and be close to her—for skincare, along with school, how friends are treating her, and her emotions in general. It is when that communication stops that I’ll be the most worried."