More than the physical harm, parents and child psychologists worry about the trend’s effects on girls’ mental health.

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.

      • casmael@lemm.ee
        173·
        4 months ago

        “My dear fellow, having thoroughly and carefully read the missive above, I remain at once incredulous and scandalised regarding the weight and severity of not only the perilous issue at hand, but also, moreover, the brief and tender youth of those involved. I would like to make it known to the assembled, that this is a state of affairs I cannot long endure - and I would like, nay hope, to consider that all those in this room (sic) with me here, now, would join me in condemning such practices, utterly, and in the most damning and contemptuble fashion - to wit, the only gloss remaining uncharted is an utteration of the simplest kind, crass in its execution, that reminds me somewhat of a dear friend of mine who - in the latter days of nineteen ninety eight, a fine year, when involved in some damnable tussle at a considerable height, cast another gentleman from the parapet and himself plunged a scarcely believable sixteen feet through an announcers table”