This Christmas, hundreds of kids as young as eight are asking for skin care and
plastic surgery instead of toys for Christmas. These little kids who can barely read a sentence longer than 5 words are asking for lip injections. The main question about this is, why? Why are these little girls wanting plastic surgery at such a young age?
What are Sephora Kids:
The term, “Sephora Kid” is used to describe the younger girls that are obsessed with skin care and beauty products that aren’t meant for them. Instead of asking for a toy doll from the mall, they ask for “Drunk Elephant” and anti-aging cream. Not surprisingly, these creams and beauty products are damaging their skin because they are so young. According to “gcimagazine.com”, 69% of parents have reported their little girls’ strong interest starting at 10 or younger. Parents have also reported 21% were wanting skin care before they were 7 years old. Our beauty standards are being pushed on little girls that are too scared to walk out of their house without a full face of make-up. Now who’s to blame because of this? There are two things that have caused this to happen. One of them being directly from home, their parents.
Parents and Posting
Parents see their kids feeling like they need makeup to feel pretty, and just brush it off as a little girl just playing. Some parents encourage their kids to post online about their skin care and make up. No parenting style is wrong, but exploiting your kids online is. For most of these Sephora kids, their parents allow them and encourage them to post online for the money. With the prices the way they are, posting on Tik Tok or any platform is an easy way to make money. A 2025 study had found that 31% of skincare videos were created by kids under the age of 13. This is really dangerous for these little kids because it exposes them to predators and so many dangerous things on the internet. The internet is a dangerous thing for younger kids. Not only because of the predators, but also its influence on us.
The Social Media Influence
Our generation is the first generation to grow up with technology and have it from a young age. And even though that’s a really interesting topic itself, it’s really affecting us as kids. We constantly see things on the internet of people posting themselves and for little kids, that’s who they want to be. This really affects little girls especially because they think they need to have everything the women posting have to be pretty. So many people, especially now, struggle with insecurity because of social media. And now, little girls are too. They aren’t worrying about their drawings anymore. They are worrying about how they look in the mirror compared to the high schooler on social media.
Age restrictions on social media aren’t enough anymore. Parents are struggling with financial problems because their kids want expensive products that aren’t made for them. Young children are becoming insecure and afraid to go to school without a full face of make up. Experts are still trying to learn ways to fix this, with a problem like this, it’s going to need more help than just restricting. According to the “Environment Working Group”, summer camps for kids are restricting them from bringing beauty products. Also stressing the fact that they don’t need it to be pretty. Parents and skincare retailers are becoming more aware and teaching kids about these things.
