Walk into a Sephora on a weekend and you may find the skincare aisle crowded with ten-year-olds, phones out, filling baskets with $68 serums. The "Sephora kids" — tweens assembling elaborate, prestige-brand routines and filming them for TikTok — have become one of the most visible consumer trends of the decade. And the money is real: U.S. prestige beauty sales rose 14% in 2023 to $31.7 billion and another 7% in 2024 to $33.9 billion, with the market research firm Circana repeatedly naming Gen Alpha, children born roughly from 2010 onward, as a cohort newly reshaping the category [source: Circana, 2024].
Then, in June 2025, a peer-reviewed study in Pediatrics looked past the sales figures at what these routines actually contain — and reached a blunt conclusion: the regimens tweens are buying and applying offer "little to no benefit" for young skin, cost a great deal, and carry a real risk of irritation and allergic reaction [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. So which is it — a harmless generational hobby, or a problem dressed up as self-care? An honest answer means separating three things that marketing tends to blur: what is actually being measured (spending), what young skin actually needs (dermatology), and what has been proven to help versus merely claimed to.
Why prestige skincare is suddenly on tween faces
The consumption side of this story is not a rumor; it is measured. Circana's receipt-panel data show U.S. prestige beauty growing for years — up 14% in 2023, 7% in 2024, and about 4% in 2025 to roughly $36 billion, a deceleration but still growth [source: Circana, 2025]. The firm has singled out Gen Alpha as an emerging force, with skincare and prestige products climbing onto young consumers' wish lists [source: Circana, 2024]. Brightly packaged lines like Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe, and Sol de Janeiro — candy-colored, collectible, endlessly postable — have become playground status symbols.
Older teens spend too, and at record levels. Piper Sandler's semi-annual "Taking Stock With Teens" survey, which polled 6,450 U.S. teenagers in spring 2025, found self-reported annual teen spending of $2,388 and a female "core beauty" wallet at a record $374, with Sephora ranked the No. 1 beauty destination [source: Piper Sandler, 2025]. But the same survey complicates the luxury narrative: teens increasingly favor affordable brands, naming e.l.f. their top cosmetics label and CeraVe a skincare favorite over pricier options [source: Piper Sandler, 2025].
That tension is worth holding onto, because two different cohorts are easily conflated. The viral "Sephora kids" are mostly tweens, roughly eight to twelve, reaching for prestige brands; the teenagers Piper Sandler surveys skew older and increasingly value-driven. Both are spending more than before, but they are not the same shoppers buying the same things — and the record $374 teen figure is not a measurement of ten-year-olds buying retinol. Keeping the cohorts distinct keeps the numbers honest.
What the routines actually contain
Spending is one measurement; the contents of the basket are another. Here the strongest evidence comes from that 2025 Pediatrics study, led by researchers at Northwestern University, who had two team members pose as thirteen-year-olds on TikTok and analyzed 100 skincare videos made by 82 creators aged 7 to 18 [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. The picture it painted is specific and unflattering.
The average routine involved six products; some showed more than twelve, and one child applied ten products in about six minutes [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. The average regimen cost $168 for roughly a month's supply, and the priciest exceeded $500, topping out at $621 [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. Crucially, the routines were loaded with active ingredients meant for adult concerns: the top 25 most-viewed regimens averaged 11 potentially irritating active ingredients, with one reaching 21 [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. More than half the products contained added fragrance, a leading cause of allergic contact dermatitis, and the authors flagged around 20 ingredients as recognized pediatric contact allergens [source: Pediatrics, 2025].
Two findings stand out for their real-world stakes. Only 26.2% of the daytime routines included sunscreen — the one product dermatologists agree young skin genuinely benefits from [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. And many routines layered exfoliating acids; the authors noted prior evidence that about four weeks of alpha-hydroxy acid use raised skin's UV sensitivity by roughly 18% and doubled sun-damage cells, a risk sharpened when most regimens skip sunscreen [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. The study's bottom line: high cost, high irritation potential, and, for this age group, little to no benefit [source: Pediatrics, 2025].
What young skin actually needs
If the routines are elaborate, the dermatological consensus on what young skin requires is strikingly simple. The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) advises that tweens and teens avoid the anti-aging actives at the heart of these viral routines — retinol, vitamin C, and exfoliating acids — because they target concerns children simply do not have, such as wrinkles, sun damage, and uneven tone [source: American Academy of Dermatology, 2025]. Young skin is still developing: thinner, more sensitive, and more prone to redness, burning, and peeling when hit with potent ingredients [source: American Academy of Dermatology, 2025].
What the AAD recommends instead fits on a single line: a gentle cleanser, a fragrance-free moisturizer, and a broad-spectrum sunscreen of SPF 30 or higher [source: American Academy of Dermatology, 2025]. Teenagers dealing with hormonal acne may add a targeted ingredient like salicylic acid or benzoyl peroxide, ideally under a dermatologist's guidance — but that is treatment for a specific condition, not a pre-emptive anti-aging step [source: American Academy of Dermatology, 2025]. As board-certified dermatologist Dr. Marisa Garshick put it, "skincare doesn't have to be complicated to be effective," and consistency matters more than a ten-step routine [source: American Academy of Dermatology, 2025].
The gap between those two pictures — an eleven-active, $168 routine on one side, a three-step, sunscreen-anchored basic on the other — is the whole story in miniature. What tweens are buying is not what dermatologists say their skin needs.
Virality is not evidence
It is tempting to read the trend's sheer popularity as a kind of proof: surely millions of glowing tween faces mean something is working. But popularity measures reach, not results. In the Pediatrics study, the 100 analyzed videos averaged about 1.1 million views each, and roughly a third were made by children thirteen or younger, nearly all of them girls [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. That is a precise measurement of how far this content travels — and it says nothing about whether the routines improve anyone's skin.
This is the correlation-versus-causation trap the trend runs on. A tween posts a "glow," the video goes viral, and the implied logic is that the products produced the glow and the glow signals health. But young skin often looks luminous with no intervention at all, and the study found that these routines are more likely to cause problems — irritation, allergic contact dermatitis, sun sensitivity — than to deliver the radiance being sold [source: Pediatrics, 2025]. A viral routine is evidence that a video performed well. It is not evidence that the skincare did.
Marketing claims versus dermatological verification
The last layer to keep straight is who is making the health claim, and on what authority. Much of this trend is powered by marketing: brands with irresistible packaging and influencers demonstrating aspirational routines. Even a brand acting responsibly is still speaking as a seller. Amid the surge, Drunk Elephant posted guidance that many of its products suit "all skin, including kids and tweens," while explicitly warning young users away from its "more potent products that include acids and retinols — their skin does not need these ingredients quite yet" [source: Drunk Elephant, 2023].
That statement is notable for two opposite reasons. It aligns with the dermatological consensus — a brand telling tweens to skip acids and retinoids echoes exactly what the AAD advises [source: American Academy of Dermatology, 2025]. But it is still a company statement about its own products, not independent verification, and a brand's assurance that some of its line is "safe" for tweens is a different kind of claim than a peer-reviewed finding of benefit. No such finding exists for anti-aging actives on young skin. Pulled apart, the layers are clear: a product can be popular, a brand can call it appropriate, and an influencer can show a glow — and none of that is the same as dermatology verifying that it helps.
What to watch
The honest read in 2026 is neither "let kids have their fun" dismissiveness nor moral panic. Tweens experimenting with a gentle cleanser, a moisturizer, and sunscreen are doing something dermatologists actively endorse. The problem is narrower and evidence-based: expensive, multi-step routines built on adult anti-aging actives that young skin does not need and can be harmed by, sold through virality that measures attention rather than results.
Three things will tell you whether the trend is maturing. First, whether retailers and brands keep steering young shoppers toward age-appropriate basics rather than potent actives, as some began to under public pressure. Second, whether the dermatological findings — real cost, real irritation risk, minimal benefit — filter down to the parents holding the credit card. And third, whether the culture starts to value the boring three-step basics over the eleven-active spectacle. Until then, the useful posture is the one the evidence supports: take the spending seriously, take the marketing lightly, and remember that a viral routine tells you a video worked, not that the skincare did.