Mom takes her skincare shopping three times a month. She’s ten

“We go pretty often — about three times a month,” the fourth-grader said.

She is far from alone.

Naiya is one of a generation known as Sephora kids

ASHLEY PAIGE

The aisles of beauty shops across America are increasingly filled with girls — and boys — as young as nine, looking for moisturisers, toners, cleansers, face masks and, increasingly, anti-ageing serums.

As they fill their baskets, concern is growing among dermatologists. They say that potent beauty products, often sold under the anti-ageing umbrella, could be seriously damaging to children’s skin.

‘Profiting from children’

With this warning in mind, this week California became the first state to attempt to ban their sale to under-18s.

Alex Lee, a member of the state assembly, introduced a bill to introduce age restrictions on certain products, accusing the beauty industry of failing in its duty of care to young people.

“When are they actually going to take concrete steps to address children buying these unsafe products? To this day they haven’t taken any meaningful action,” Lee said.

Lee introduced the bill after being appalled at hearing of girls as young as ten buying anti-ageing products. He is urging companies to take more responsibility.

Some skincare products are marketed as safe for children

“A lot of parents think this is just their child, but it’s more systemic because the multibillion-dollar beauty industry knows that their products are not appropriate for children and continue to profit off them,” he said.

“These young children are, hopefully for the companies, lifelong customers and they’re very reluctant to do anything that would hurt their marketing or sales.”

Sephora has been contacted for comment. Ulta has previously said it does not proactively target Generation Alpha consumers.

This is not good enough for Lee, who wants the law to intervene.

He hopes success in California — the most populous state in America with an economy larger than the UK’s — will prompt action elsewhere.

‘The key to a glass skin look’

Tween consumers are, in some cases, spending hundreds of dollars in a single haul, showing off their wares in elaborate morning and nightly routine videos shared on TikTok. Partly to blame are the “skinfluencers”: social media personalities who create hundreds of hours of content showing them using everything from skin balms and beauty masks to anti-wrinkle creams.

One teenage skinfluencer produced a video alongside her mother touting the benefits of retinol products which would be banned for children under the California bill.

She admitted to being wary of using retinol, a form of vitamin A used to combat signs of ageing, after hearing “horror stories”.

After applying a product from the Korean brand Some By Me, however, the fresh-faced social media star said she was won over. Retinol, she informed her followers, is “key if you want to achieve a glass skin look”.

• Parents, step in if your tween’s skincare routine is driven by TikTok

In another TikTok video, a youthful-looking woman with perfectly smooth skin suggested she had considered more drastic action before settling on a retinol cream.

“Just turned 23 and decided to wait on getting any Botox so I’m forcing myself to stay consistent with my retinol,” the caption said as she held up a bottle of the product.

Spending on skincare by Generation Alpha, those born between 2010 and 2024 in the cohort that follows Generation Z, has risen sharply in recent years, according to one study.

NielsenIQ, the market research company, said households with “tweens” — or children aged 6 to 12 — spent $2.4 billion on facial skin care in 2023, an annual rise of 27.2 per cent.

Dermatologists have warned of the dangers posed by the harsh chemicals hiding behind labels promising to repair or renew skin.

‘I heard it on TikTok’

The idea behind anti-ageing products — which are generally marketed at consumers in their late twenties and older — is to stimulate collagen and cell production in older skin. But on the youthful faces of children, this can result in over-stimulation: redness, peeling and burning.

Lee’s bill would ban the sale of cosmetic products to under-18s if they contain vitamin A and its derivatives, including retinoids and retinol — which are common in anti-ageing creams from well-known brand products such as L’Oreal.

Products made with an alpha hydroxy acid including glycolic acid, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) or citric acid would also be prohibited for children. Creams from brands including CeraVe and Kiehl’s use glycolic acid.

Dr Brooke Jeffy, a dermatologist in Scottsdale, Arizona, has seen the rise of the skinfluencer directly reflected in her waiting room.

Jeffy said there had been a “dramatic increase in the number of young girls” in her practice since the autumn of 2023.

She believes the rise can be partially pinned on the prevalence of apps such as Zoom, which have made teens and tweens more aware of their image.

“During Covid, lots of schools were doing remote learning so kids were seeing themselves during class and even extracurricular activities they were doing online,” she said.

“And now they also know that they can be photographed at any point — by their friends or by their parents — and be posted on social media. So there is definitely an increased awareness of appearance at a younger age.”

It is also common for her to overhear young people in her clinic saying “I heard it on TikTok”, Jeffy said. “When I see my younger patients and ask them, ‘why did you choose to use this product?’ they often say, ‘because I saw it on social media’.”

Naiya’s mother said she would not let her daughter use anti-ageing products

ASHLEY PAIGE

Paige, a former make-up artist, said she carefully investigated each item before Naiya can buy it, and would not allow her daughter to use anti-ageing products.

“We always research before,” said Naiya, who has been interested in skincare for years. “If we don’t know if a product is toxic or good for young skin, we research it and then we make a video on it.”

These mother-and-daughter videos are then posted to their TikTok account, which has more than 60,000 followers. “That it is educational is something that’s really important to her and I,” Paige said.