Is That a Wrinkle?

If you are active at all on TikTok, it's not hard to see the recent obsession over skincare and anti-aging practices. It almost seems impossible to scroll through the app without coming across a video of somebody’s ten-step skincare routine or advice about how to keep youthful looking skin for as long as possible. The recent push for skin care practices like using a jade roller, gua sha, LED light therapy mask or silicone anti-wrinkle pads have us all questioning if we are doing enough for our skin.

TikTok is essentially a breeding ground for beauty trends, which opens the doors for skincare brands to market their products by sponsoring influencers to encourage viewers to buy them. When someone with perfect looking skin, who could very likely be using a beauty filter, is telling you what you “must” buy to look like her, it’s a challenge to not want to get the product she raves about. It’s no new development for brands to prey on the insecurities of women in order to get them to buy their beauty products, but the recent rise in marketing on TikTok has some pretty steep consequences. 

This obsession with staying youthful has created a mentality in Gen Z to fear aging, and it’s not hard to see. Videos are surfacing of young women asking the internet how old their viewers think they look in response to people criticizing Gen Z for looking older than they should. TikTok has also come out with multiple aging filters that show very realistic looking versions of ourselves decades down the line. If you have tried any of these filters, chances are the saggy skin and wrinkles had you scouring the internet for a miracle anti-aging product. This problem gets even worse when you consider that this content is being seen by very young girls, and it's affecting them as well. A TikTok that has now been deleted but shared on X shows a 14-year-old girl explaining her routine to “slow down the aging process” that she started at 12, which includes using retinol and two face masks a day.

This article isn’t meant to turn you away from using any skin care products or say that certain things don’t work, but it’s a caution to be mindful of the influence that TikTok has on your self esteem, fears of aging and vulnerability as a consumer. Ultimately, our skin is going to age and no amount of beauty products or botox will change that fact. It’s incredibly normal to fear aging and the changes it brings to our bodies, but there is a difference between self-care and unhealthy obsession. The bottom line is this: we are way too young to be this worried about looking old.