Skincare Fads To Avoid At All Costs

The world of skincare has been thrown into as much flux as everyone else, and amidst the chaos, upheaval and shifts to the lives of the vast majority of people on earth, a new trendsetter has emerged in the world of skincare.

Whilst TikTok was certainly a part of the skincare conversation prior to 2020, over the past three years it has been nearly impossible to discuss natural skincare without discussing trends such as slugging and skinimalism that have either originated or been popularised on the website.

However, whilst you can sometimes find useful skincare advice on social media, often you find advice that is either ridiculous, unnecessary, outright dangerous or some combination of all of the above.

Here are some of the most notable examples of social media skincare fads to avoid.

Over-The-Top Skincare Routines

Social media is filled with a lot of skincare routines and steps, most of which tend to contradict each other and often involve a huge number of products and sometimes complicated applications.

Ultimately, this can sometimes be counterproductive, and it is typically better to consult with a dermatologist to find a skincare routine that works for you.

Consistency is key with any routine, so having three products that you use regularly is a better approach than ten products that either overly irritate or are neglected.

Pickle Skincare

Fear not, Branston is unlikely to become the new face of beauty, and the next cleansing toner is not likely to be piccalilli.

Pickled vegetables can help your skin in a roundabout way by providing probiotic and antioxidant compounds that are beneficial to the skin if you eat them, but turning the brine into a face mask or an acid-based toner is just asking for trouble.

Not even getting into the fact that the smell of brine is painfully overpowering at the best of times and will linger all day, but pickle juice can cause irritation and inflamed skin, necessitating a trip to the pharmacy to find something over-the-counter that can help.

Sunscreen Contouring

A far more innocuous but still harmful trend, some people were convinced that they could use sunscreen as a highlight to deliberately encourage tan lines in certain places.

Ultimately the harm comes in the tan itself. The unfortunate truth is that there is no type of suntan 

that is safe for your skin except for the stuff that comes out of a bottle, and intentionally risking your health and increasing your chance of skin cancer is not the best way to get a contour.

DIY Microneedling

This one does not bear thinking about. For people who are unaware, microneedling is typically a dermatological procedure where a roller with tiny needles is rolled over the skin, creating tiny punctures that stimulate collagen growth.

Whilst the jury is out about its efficacy in a sterile clinic, a particularly dangerous trend involved people buying a personal dermaroller themselves and rolling it over their faces.

The potential risks involved with such a treatment are fairly self-evident; dermarollers are intended to wound the skin, and outside of a clinic there is a much greater risk of infection.

Also, a lot of at-home dermarollers use duller, smaller needles, which have a much greater risk of causing scarring and irritation.