This transcript was generated automatically.
10:00:00:00 - 10:00:06:18
Kassandra
The beauty industry is increasingly targeting teens and children. Warda Imran joins us from DW Business.
10:00:06:18 - 10:00:20:03
Daniel
So what a this all kicked off, when an actress named Shay Mitchell launched a skincare line for kids, and that's what brought you to cover it lately. What was different about her line that kind of kicked off this controversy recently?
10:00:20:03 - 10:00:44:16
Warda
It's called Rini, which is roughly children in Korean. She started it with her Korean business partner, and the website says that it's elevated by Korean innovation. Now, everything sounds good on paper. What really made people mad or parents really angry was its launch, and it was launched with this image of a toddler, you know, roughly between the age of 2 to 3 with holding a sheet mask on their face.
10:00:44:16 - 10:01:06:12
Warda
And it's promoting hydration, hydrology also. But it really didn't sit right with so many parents, you know, under that, under that post, there were comments from people that said, maybe these these kids can't even speak, but we're expecting them to put on a, you know, like a face mask. So I think that image really didn't sit well with a lot of people, and it ruffled a lot of feathers.
10:01:06:15 - 10:01:31:09
Warda
And so there was this kind of backlash on the actress. And what this shows is that the beauty landscape has completely transformed. Now, this multi-step skincare, multi-step skin prepping has become for all ages. And that is not the case. There are a lot of people, including dermatologists and scientists, who say that a lot of these products are not good for a child's skin.
10:01:31:11 - 10:01:48:21
Kassandra
You know, vada, I was one of these kids, or maybe more of a young teenager who was buying, you know, cheap nail polish or wet and wild branded blue lipstick or something like that from the drugstore back in the day. But that was because I could see it when I went into the store to do, you know, errands with my parents or whatever.
10:01:48:23 - 10:01:57:13
Kassandra
Where are these kids? Some as young as three. You're saying, why are they even learning about skincare regimes?
10:01:57:15 - 10:02:14:13
Warda
Well, a lot of it is first, watching your parents, right? This is also what the actress Shay Mitchell said. She said that, oh my children want to do something with mom. When she's doing her skin routine. So that was kind of the inspiration behind it. So the first step of exposure is definitely the parents. But that's not all.
10:02:14:13 - 10:02:22:12
Warda
The biggest role is played by social media. Now, I don't know if you do have come across this trend. Hashtag Sephora kids, have you guys seen it?
10:02:22:14 - 10:02:23:02
Kassandra
Yes.
10:02:23:08 - 10:02:25:08
Daniel
I think I'm in a different algorithm.
10:02:25:08 - 10:02:28:24
Kassandra
Than you guys. I relate to you Vada. I definitely relate to you.
10:02:29:01 - 10:02:48:05
Warda
Right? So Danielle, because you've not seen it, I'm a pinch you a picture, right? Imagine that there's tens of thousands of videos of moms, of older sisters kind of taking their younger sisters who are in elementary school or sometimes even younger, to go to Sephora to buy, you know, and have like a Sephora hauls. It's goodie bags filled with.
10:02:48:05 - 10:03:11:00
Warda
I'm not even sure if they're age appropriate at that point, but this idea of, children wanting to go and, you know, go through beauty. I'll see all the products, see all the colors. And this has been this kind of trend has been one of the drivers for in-store shopping. But that's not that's not all. Because, beauty products is one of the biggest, drivers of sales of Tick Tock Shop.
10:03:11:06 - 10:03:31:19
Warda
That means that when you kind of see this, trend on TikTok, your next instinct is to buy it. And so you go to the tick tock shop and you, you press, you know, buy. But the thing is that we're not sure how people are able to regulate this, to see if it's a dupe, if it's an original, what is what is this child buying, you know, so it's kind of blurry over there.
10:03:31:21 - 10:03:49:03
Daniel
Okay. What I'm going to turn the heat up a little bit and play bad cop. All right. That there are millions of parents who are buying this for their kids. It's very rarely can actually be the kids themselves who are buying this. Isn't it just something that kids have always done? They've copied their parents. They want to play dress up, played out.
10:03:49:09 - 10:03:55:09
Daniel
They're grown up. Is there any evidence that this actually harms kids in any way?
10:03:55:11 - 10:04:23:15
Warda
Yes. Well, Yale Medicine dermatologist Kathleen Susy, she did a study about this, and she said most children in need for things water, a very, very gentle cleanser, lotion, some moisturizer and sunscreen. That's it. Anything else can be detrimental to a child's skin. I mean, someone who's that young already has a very healthy skin that's, you know, that's going to get better over time.
10:04:23:21 - 10:04:55:11
Warda
And you don't need to make that. You don't need to break that barrier with all these products. But it's not just the Yale, survey. You know, it's also other research. Now, the expert that I spoke to when I was working on this, on this topic, she had a rather grim, forecast. She said that because of all the extra skin care, younger children or younger people are doing right now, we might be seeing an increased reporting of skin inflammation in the future because they will have used all these products, which which they're not meant to.
10:04:55:14 - 10:04:59:12
Warda
So definitely there is research that suggests that this is not really good.
10:04:59:14 - 10:05:05:12
Kassandra
Stepping back when we're talking about skin care, how big of a part of the beauty industry is this?
10:05:05:14 - 10:05:34:01
Warda
Well, the global beauty industry, according to McKinsey, is valued at $450 billion. Now the number sometimes is between 350 billion to 400. But the thing is, it is a big industry and skin care is $113 billion from that. So it's already grown into a really big segment. And now if you go into the US alone, it's slated to go to $30 billion worth in the coming years.
10:05:34:03 - 10:05:42:15
Warda
So it's actually a very big market. And what we're seeing, you know, celebrities, brands, everyone's opening up shop on this. So it's just going to get bigger okay.
10:05:42:15 - 10:06:03:04
Daniel
And wonder, is this a case of these companies trying to get in early, lock in loyal customers, for life for their early years? And are there any rules against this kind of thing, any kind of marketing? I kind of, I guess, protection against, the type of marketing which could influence younger people.
10:06:03:06 - 10:06:33:03
Warda
I'm so glad you brought that up, Daniel, because, you know, this consumer's for life thing is literally one of the biggest criticisms of this new baby, baby skincare or skincare for tweens movement. And it's it's coming from all directions, you know, from scientists to critics to observers. They're all saying that it's setting up this young child to forever be a consumer, and it actually is a profitable demographic because, you know, like we discussed, children are not buying this product themselves.
10:06:33:03 - 10:06:55:11
Warda
It's their parents that are buying it. So if you have, willing parents and wealthy parents, then why would businesses step away from this? You know, and talking about marketing because I think none of these brands are directly marketing to children. They're, they're outsourcing this to influencers. You know, who will use a drop of this, a drop of that in their videos.
10:06:55:11 - 10:07:05:17
Warda
And just seeing this is marketing enough. So I'm, I'm also worried about the lack of rules around this, but hopefully, you know, the bigger it becomes, the more we'll be able to regulate it.
10:07:07:13 - 10:07:14:22
Kassandra
And that was just a sneak peak of our show, The Dip. If you want to check out more of our show, you can scan the QR code that's appearing on your screen right now.
10:07:14:24 - 10:07:22:19
Daniel
And thank you very much for watching. And we'll be back here again. Same time, same place. Until then, thank you very much for watching the Dip.