Have you walked into a Sephora lately? If so, the floor has probably been flooded with 10-year-olds buying up every product in sight. As it becomes more common for younger children to be on social media, kids are just as easily influenced, if not more, and are buying into all the same trends such as creating “get ready with me” videos.
When we were younger for most teenagers, one of the trends(when)was to go to Claires and buy Lip Smackers of various flavors and play with makeup to play around with. Gen Alphas trends, thanks to the growing presence of social media they have grown up around, has implanted a feeling in them that they need to buy all of these expensive “skin-benefiting” products to fit in with the new trends.
Now, many young girls go into stores unsupervised with their friends and make a mess of the tester products. Through this process, the brands being played with are losing a lot of revenue because of the amount of testers that are being thrown out in stores due to them being destroyed by the children.
Some skin experts are chiming in and saying that when many of these products are used on such young, not damaged skin, it could be causing them to have more acne or other skin-related problems, having the opposite intended effect. This in turn is ultimately leading to the kids going and buying more products to now try and clear the damage done to their faces.
This problem can be rooted back to body issue images, as it all relates to the common thread of how they look online and how they are perceived by their peers. They want to look older and feel the beauty standards of pretty to fit into this generation.
This is also impacting the older generations, as many of the products are being sold at a rapid pace, making them unavailable to those who actually need them. The next time you go into a Sephora be prepared to have to deal with the girls and that what you want might not be left on the shelf.
Some critics are also saying that they may start checking IDs and not let anyone who is under 16 years old into Sephora. Some agree with this and others are pushing back in the kids at Sephora group on the Sephora community page. User Yogabri had this to say about allowing them to id. “I 100% agree. Sephora is not a Claire’s. Sephora is not a playground for little girls. These millennial parents are letting their young daughters from the ages of 6-12 buy products that not even a 25-year-old Sephora worker would recommend such as retinol. It’s extremely dangerous and I agree that people should be ID checked at the checkout, especially for drunk elephant products”. A fellow teen user 8932 shares their thoughts on ID at checkout“ I don’t think you should need an id just to go to Sephora I think it’s not the children’s fault that they want to buy viral stuff and be like older girls like when I was 10 I would always want to be like my older sister so that’s what they’re thinking since social media is a big thing for teens they see all the older girls on TikTok. ”
