Beauty brands and retailers have a Gen Alpha problem

The insight: Gen Alpha’s seemingly insatiable desire for anti-aging skincare is creating problems for beauty brands and retailers, as they try to educate younger consumers about the risks of active ingredients like retinol without slowing sales momentum.

Shelfie life: Beauty products—particularly premium ones, like Dior lip oils and Drunk Elephant serums—have, like the Stanley cup, become status symbols for tweens, thanks to attractive packaging and the ubiquity of beauty content on TikTok and YouTube.

But many “Sephora kids” are now reporting rashes, sunburn, and irritation after frequent use of popular skincare products, putting pressure on retailers like Ulta and Sephora—as well as top brands like Glow Recipe—to make disclosures about products’ potential harms more visible, and possibly even limit sales to shoppers below a certain age.

• A proposed bill by California assemblyperson Alex Lee would require warnings or age verification for anti-aging products, although the measure failed to advance.
• Some brands, like Estée Lauder’s The Ordinary and Bubble Skincare, are making efforts to educate younger consumers about the potential risks of their products through social media posts and warnings on their websites—although such advice can easily be missed or ignored, particularly by tweens trying to keep up with their peers.

The big takeaway: Given the difficulty of imposing age limits on skincare purchases—especially given that most are made by parents—the onus is on brands and retailers to make clear which products are safe for very young consumers to use.

• Brands should follow Bubble’s example and add warnings to TikTok and other social media content to ensure viewers are fully aware of the risks.
• Developing child-friendly product lines could also enable brands to capitalize on clear interest from tweens without raising dermatologists’ ire.