Ellie-May was 10 when she smiled at the camera, rubbed toner into her skin and gushed: “Oh my god it’s so glowy.” Now 13, she has been using skincare and advertising it since she was eight. Her TikTok account has more than 330,000 followers. What began in lockdown as fun has become a main source of income for her family.
Her mother Sophie, who has five other children, says they make over £50,000 a year from posting content across Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. “Being content creators has transformed our lives,” Sophie told the BBC. “So many other young kids just wanted to know about Ellie’s skincare routine and, well, it just took off.”
“Pre-teen girls, some as young as three, make thousands promoting skincare on social media, fuelling cosmeticorexia fears.”
Type “children and skincare” into social media search engines and you will find videos of hundreds of other young girls – some as young as three or four – enthusing over products or doing “get ready with me” routines. While scrubs and cleansers of past decades promised a spot-free complexion, girls today use a wider variety of sophisticated products, many containing anti-ageing ingredients, in the hope of achieving flawless skin.
Some girl influencers describe themselves as “brand ambassadors”, showcasing products from the likes of Bubble, Drunk Elephant, and P. Louise. There are K-Pop Demon Hunters-themed skincare packs for a “glow-boosting routine” for “skin that looks luminous”.
But not all brands welcome the association. A source close to Drunk Elephant says it is not a “youth-focused” brand. The trend has been dubbed “cosmeticorexia” by experts who fear long-term impacts on girls, though the full extent remains unclear.
For Ellie-May and her family, the financial rewards are clear. For the youngest influencers, the rabbit hole runs ever deeper.