Dermatologist Elizabeth Houshmand sees a lot of tweens and teens in her Dallas practice. A few months ago, a mother brought her 9-year-old daughter in with a significantly red, itching face. It turns out the daughter had been using a moisturizer that she'd seen promoted on social media.
"The mom felt so bad," she says, "because she had purchased it for her. A lot of her friends were using this particular brand's products.” But neither mother nor child realized that the moisturizer contained glycolic acid, an exfoliating ingredient that can be too harsh for the thinner skin of preteens.
"It's not the product. Those are good products if used by the right person. It's the fact that it's the wrong product for that age demographic," Houshmand says.
As teens and tweens have become major consumers of skin care products, dermatologists are seeing more of these types of cases. It's a trend fueled by social media, which is awash with young influencers demonstrating their multistep skin care routines, some of which feature products that are quite pricey. Carol Cheng , a pediatric dermatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, says she's also seeing more kids and adolescents come in with rashes caused by layering on too many products in pursuit of a flawless, poreless look promoted on Instagram and TikTok as " glass skin .
" "Unfortunately, that can backfire, causing redness, peeling, flaking, burning," Cheng says. "And so we see patients coming in for these concerns more t.