Driven by TikTok trends, new beauty brands target kids

Should children use beauty face masks? Dermatologists say no, but a growing number of companies are targeting a new generation of kids who have grown up with TikTok makeup and skincare routines.

The cosmetics industry and parts of the internet have been abuzz since the launch of Rini earlier this month, a beauty company aimed at children as young as three and backed by Canadian actress Shay Mitchell.

Its five-pack of hydrating face masks for kids, including “everyday” varieties called Puppy, Panda and Unicorn, sells for about $35 (30 euros) on its website.

Another growing American brand, Evereden, sells products for tweens such as facial mists, toners and moisturizers and claims annual sales of more than $100 million.

Fifteen-year-old American YouTuber Salish Matter launched her brand Sincerely Yours in October, drawing tens of thousands of people (and police reinforcements) to a launch event at a New Jersey shopping mall.

“Children's skin does not need cosmetics, apart from daily hygiene products – toothpaste and shower gel – and sun cream when there is exposure,” says Laurence Coiffard, a researcher at the University of Nantes in France, who co-runs the website Cosmetics Watch.

Kid-focused beauty products are part of a broad trend across society. Many girls in Generation Alpha — the marketing term for young women born between 2010 and 2024 — are adopting skincare, makeup and hair routines more typical of older teens or their mothers.

The precocious ones have become known as “Sephora Kids” – in reference to the popular French beauty retailer – as they try to copy popular TikTok or YouTube influencers, some of whom are as young as seven years old.

Coiffard cited research showing that children who used adult cosmetics and creams had a higher risk of developing skin allergies in adulthood, as well as being exposed to endocrine disruptors and phytoestrogens that can disrupt hormonal development.

Molly Hales, an American dermatologist at Northwestern University in Chicago, spent several months posing on TikTok as a 13-year-old girl interested in beauty routines. After creating a profile and liking several videos made by minors, she and fellow researcher Sarah Rigali were “saturated” by the Chinese-owned site's algorithm.

The duo watched 100 videos in total from 82 different profiles. In one, a girl smeared 14 different products on her face before developing a burning rash. Another showed a girl supposedly waking up at 4:30 a.m. to complete her skincare and makeup routine before going to school.

The most popular videos were titled “Get Ready with Me,” and the routines featured an average of six different products, often including anti-aging creams for adults, with an average combined cost of $168.

“I was surprised by the scope of what I was seeing in these videos, especially the sheer amount of products these girls were using,” Hales told AFP. Their research was published in the US journal Pediatrics in June.

Several “disproportionately represented” brands, such as Glow, Drunk Elephant or The Ordinary, promote themselves as healthy and supposedly natural alternatives to their chemical-laden competitors. The 25 most viewed videos analyzed by Hales contained products with an average of 11 and a maximum of 21 active ingredients potentially irritating to pediatric skin.

The argument of new children's brands such as Rini, Evereden or Saint Crewe is that they are guiding pre-teens and teenagers towards more suitable alternatives. “Kids are naturally curious and instead of ignoring it, we can embrace it. With safe, gentle products that parents can trust,” Rini co-founder Mitchell told his 35 million Instagram followers.

Hales said she had “mixed feelings” about the emergence of the trend, saying there was a potential benefit in providing less harmful products to girls. But “they're not really necessary” and “they perpetuate a certain standard of beauty, or an expectation of how the health and beauty of your skin should be cared for by using a very expensive and time-consuming daily routine,” she said.

The products risked “diverting girls from better uses of their time, money and effort,” she added.

Pierre Vabres, a member of the French Society of Dermatology, believes there is also a harmful psychological effect of exposing children to beauty routines and then trying to sell them products. “There is a risk of giving the child a false, even eroticized image of himself, in which he is 'a miniature adult' who needs to think about his appearance to feel good,” he told reporters in Paris this month.