Tiktok is the new tireswing
Audrey Strauss / The Samohi
Generation Alpha is the first generation to have a hand-held smart device for the entirety of their lives. 10-year-olds flooding Sephoras all across the nation are making news because they are purchasing extremely expensive make-up and skin care products designed and marketed towards adults. This led to the “Drunk Elephant 12-year-olds'' trend on TikTok, where pre-teens purchase unnecessary skincare products. Gen Z creators have shared “horror stories of these preteens, and how they make the shopping experience unpleasant and more stressful for adults.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha have both had access to media at too young of an age. However, what makes Gen Alpha’s situation different is the fact that they start posting on social media at a younger age; thus they have an actual presence online, posting influencer-like content, such as “Get Ready With Me” (GRWM) videos.
The videos that appear on Gen. Alpha’s “For You Page” are people in their 20s getting ready for adult events or activities while promoting make-up and skin care products. This causes Gen Alpha to overconsume content made by adult influencers tailored toward Gen Z teenagers.
Annabel Thorpe (‘26) shares her perspective that “Children are getting consumed by the media they watch and wearing makeup and skincare products that aren’t beneficial to them. Their skin is too immature to handle this and they are not old enough to use it that regularly.”
Skincare and makeup products are designed and tested for fully developed people to use. Routinely applying products intended for more developed bodies and skin is not only unnecessary but potentially harmful for a ten-year-old to use.
Especially anti-aging skincare materials such as retinol, which should only be used during teenage years if a person struggles with severe acne and is prescribed it by a doctor. Most pre-teens have extremely clear skin and shouldn’t dabble in anything other than sunscreen and maybe some lip gloss.
Ultimately, it comes down to the parents. Gen Alpha is the product of millennial parents. They’ve embraced “gentle parenting”, a less strict approach to parenting, to the point where they don't have clear enough boundaries with their kids. Instead of being able to set boundaries and let their kids know when they're asking for too much or they've crossed a line, they let their kids have, say, and do whatever they want. This is not to say that parenting is easy, generational parenting styles are historically overly harsh and lead to trauma. However, there is a happy medium to be struck as kids need a backbone in their lives. The current state of parenting has swung too far in the opposite direction, allowing children to fall victim to consumer culture. This new phenomenon will likely lead to unforeseen difficulties to Gen Alpha’s development.
Wanting to grow up quicker is a very normal part of being in this grey area of childhood; not quite a teenager but also no longer resonating with young kids. However, skincare and makeup are only one example, the kids of Gen Alpha are losing so many crucial aspects of their childhoods. Constantly being on screens and wanting to look older is fabricating a huge divide in what growing up was not even a decade ago. Rather than ride a bike or swing around on a tire swing in a friend’s backyard, Gen Alpha spends their time contemplating what to post to their Instagram Story and invading adult spaces. Call me old fashioned, but kids need to stop rapidly wasting their childhoods and go play outside!
