Photo by Deva Darshan on Unsplash
In the past couple of weeks, TikTok has been flooded with viral posts from beauty store shoppers and employees blaming social media, influencer culture, and inadequate parental supervision for pre-teen girls ages 9 to 12, dubbed “Sephora kids,” acting up while shopping for beauty products.
Dozens of videos have called out swarms of preteens flooding Sephora and Ulta stores, speaking rudely to employees, disturbing displays, and strong-arming their parents into spending hundreds of dollars on products.
“You see these kind of mean girl antics from these 10-year-olds," Sequoia Cothran, a Sephora employee from Tennessee, told Fox News Digital.
A bigger concern for many is pre-adolescents obsessing over beauty products traditionally marketed to women and older teens, including exfoliators and anti-aging products with retinol that may be too harsh for pre-teens’ skin.
According to Javon Ford, a cosmetic chemist based in Los Angeles, “Kids are often finding these products on social media when an influencer raves about the changes their skin has undergone, but they don’t realize the person they’re watching on a screen is speaking to an older audience.” Retinols, exfoliating acids, and other ingredients can damage the skin barrier for younger kids because it is not yet fully formed.
Additionally, influencer-sponsored advertisements and step-by-step tutorials for makeup and skincare products are seen creating a generation of children with unprecedented levels of anxiety and self-esteem issues.
“Social media influencers are expanding their target group, so there’s a lot of pressure for kids to fit in and figure out what’s trending to feel connected with their friends much earlier than they need to be feeling that,” Sonia Rodrigues, psychotherapist and senior director of Child and Adolescent Services with Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care in New Jersey, told USA Today.
Some place the trend partly on tweens having fewer places to go with the exit of Justice, Limited Too, and Delia’s, as well as store closings at Claire’s in recent years.
In several viral TikToks on the subject, women are calling for beauty stores like Ulta and Sephora to impose an age restriction to enter, banning anyone under 18.
On the positive side, several articles on the phenomenon noted that girls are maturing earlier with more access to information online and discussed the potential benefits of girls learning about sun protection and other healthy skin practices early in their lives. Beauty brands and retailers may have an opportunity to develop age-appropriate ranges for tweens while facing more responsibilities around education.
Meanwhile, parents are being encouraged to have discussions with their daughters about social media’s influence and body positivity.
“There is something positive about what’s happening right now,” Namhee Han, founder of Be-Tween, a range of skincare products designed for tweens, told the Independent. “If we took a moment to really think about what we were like at this age, we weren’t quite sure of ourselves either. They need space to figure themselves out and gain that confidence.”