What is our fear of aging doing to our kids’ mental health?

Lately my mirror’s been doing some weird stuff. My hair is turning white. Tiny lines have carved themselves around my eyes, and crevasses are forming between my cheeks and mouth, unmistakable marionette lines my 43-year-old face can no longer hide. Do I need to upgrade my night routine?

A quick peek online reveals that I have even weirder company: age-obsessed tweens. These so-called “Sephora kids” have been bombarding the beauty retailer, and others like it, with their dollars in exchange for anti-aging potions they think will keep them forever young, and Sephora customers and cultural commentators alike are concerned by the trend.

Are these miniature snatched-face-seekers in search of a premature fountain of youth a harbinger of even worse things to come—or do they simply reflect a shallow reality fueled by social media, filters, and product placement?

“We’re selling the idea that we are all against aging, because we should be afraid of it—and better yet, battle it,” sociologist and University of British Columbia professor Laura Hurd tells me.

Beauty marketing bonanza

I can’t scoff at the trend. I was an impressionable kid once, too, and as a tween and young teen in the early 1990s, I vividly remember taking my babysitting earnings to the local Thrifty’s, buying an ice cream cone, then parking myself on the floor next to the magazine rack to read each teen magazine cover to cover.

These magazines taught me that it was my job to be “fresh-faced” and lovely, to artfully conceal any hint of a zit or a shiny nose, that my social cachet and future happiness could be imperiled by dark under-eye circles or freckles, which I had in the millions and which I was convinced condemned me to eternal pariah-dom. But it never occurred to me to swipe some of my mom’s Oil of Olay.

(What does your skin actually need?)

That doesn’t surprise historian Kathy Peiss, author of Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. Her research shows how kids and teens—particularly girls—were sucked into a 20th-century marketing bonanza.

Before World War II, makeup was marketed primarily to women in their twenties and older, and many people relied on homemade concoctions to perfect their complexions. But starting in the 1940s, cosmetic companies began leaning into market segmentation—and designing advertising just for teens and kids. Both demographics had their “own” star products: acne-fighting products and trend-chasing items for teens, toy makeup kits for younger kids.

Meanwhile, anti-aging products were the sole province of older women eager (or desperate) to preserve their looks—which is probably why other teenagers and I never thought to pick them up.

Acne remedies are still aimed at teens today. But social media exposes them to older beauty influencers, too—public figures who are open about their use of anti-aging skin care, Botox, and other cosmetic procedures. The omnipresence of those products—touted by marketers as “holy grails” for consumers—means teenagers are more likely today to pick them up. The phenomenon is so widespread that cosmetics giants are distancing themselves from it—Unilever even launched a campaign “to protect girls’ self-esteem from anti-aging skincare pressures.”

A mirror warped by filters

The myth of my youth that a blemish-free visage was both preferable and obtainable was fueled by retouched images that fostered the illusion that other people actually possessed these perfections.

That technique, it turns out, is as old as photography itself. People began begging photographers to airbrush or literally paint away their imperfections in the mid-19^th century, when photography had evolved to the point where you could see every wrinkle and pore, Peiss says. “What’s different now,” she says, “is that it’s available to everyone.”

(It’s harder than ever to identify a manipulated photo. Here’s where to start.)

Apps like Facetune and the easy-to-use photo editing tools that come standard with every smartphone have made it easier than ever before to achieve that flaw-free face on camera. The ubiquity of filters has even spurred its own countermovement, #nofilter, in which people claim to post “candid” shots of their unfiltered faces. But the #nofilter trend is much less widespread than you may think: Studies suggest that up to 90 percent of people edit their selfies before posting.

That has real-world consequences: In a study published in 2023, participants who edited photos of themselves were likelier to perceive themselves as less attractive. They also engaged in what theorists call self-objectification: internalizing what an outside viewer might think of their appearance instead of prioritizing their own self-image. Self-objectification is associated with body shame, eating disorders, and mood disorders like depression.

Studies show that teens sometimes use selfies to seek approval from their peers as well as to manage body dysmorphia, a mental illness that obsessively focuses on supposed “flaws” in someone’s appearance. And social media can make things worse: In one nationally representative survey in 2022, the parents of eight- to 18-year-olds who are self-conscious about their looks were twice as likely to report that their child’s self-image is more affected by social media than real-life.

Social media has always been good at tailoring content to individuals. But now trends that might once have taken months or years to filter into the mainstream do so in days. Instead of pursuing mass messaging, advertisers are discovering extremely targeted micromarkets based on demographics and online behavior. It’s a disquieting development, and one that suddenly makes the kids-plus-anti-aging-serums equation make sense.

What does all this mean for kids?

There’s the obvious question as to whether a child’s often sensitive (and already wrinkle-free!) skin can stand up to the harsh ingredients designed to blast wrinkles into oblivion—and reports of allergic reactions and face freakouts abound. It’s also unclear what the trend of preventative Botox injections—designed to keep wrinkles from emerging in the first place—means for young skin.

(Melanoma is overdiagnosed at “alarming” rates. Here’s what to know.)

But the more I witness these phenomena, the more I worry about what the paucity of aging faces online will do to kids’ sense of reality—and their self-perceptions once they themselves begin aging.

Hurd is afraid of something else: The ways in which an expanded interest in “anti-aging” products perpetuates prejudice.

“We are right out in people’s faces about the fact that we are against aging,” she says. “We’re selling this idea that we should be afraid of it and, better yet, we should be battling it.”

This fear leads to real consequences for older people, Hurd says, from casual ageism to institutional and social practices that exclude, dehumanize, and endanger older adults. Hurd’s research reveals that the social stigma causes harm to the self-esteem of older people—especially women.

Self-image is just the beginning: Workplace discrimination, problems finding romantic partners, and a loss of “social currency” are all associated with looking old. Ageism can even promote elder abuse: Though research on the topic is still in its infancy, researchers are teasing out links between committing and tolerating the mistreatment of older adults.

“The language of anti-aging is problematic,” says Hurd. “But we just accept it.”

But we don’t have to—and maybe the supposed epidemic of Sephora Kids offers us adults an opportunity to check in on our own attitudes about aging.

What if instead of scanning our features for evidence of snatched cheekbones, we considered what a privilege it would be to earn even more wrinkles, sags, and scars? What if we taught our kids how to recognize a filter, spot a deepfake, or identify the telltale signs of heavy photo editing?

It may sound pie-in-the-sky, but as Hurd points out, there are real-world ways to fight ageism: People can advocate for policies that support older adults, get to know their elders, and look for ways to mix generations in their social lives.

Once I got off the phone with Hurd, I decided to cross “upgraded night serum” off my list—and remind myself to look for my 43 years of experience next time I pass the mirror. It’s time to battle my own internalized ageism instead.