It’s now 2024 and the newest trend circulating is the many videos of, and opinions on, 10-year-olds in Sephora.

What’s so bad about 10-year-olds in Sephora?
Videos feature children throwing tantrums, messing up the displays, congregating in loud groups, yelling at workers, and their own parents. Absolute chaos if you ask me. Why are they doing this though, where did the interest even come from? After speaking to a couple of anonymous beauty store employees,  the answer truly differs from person to person. However, it’s quite possible that it’s largely due to social media and the ease of access that kids nowadays have to it.

“I would say there are young girls, some like Elementary School age, seeing all these ‘get ready with me’s’ and it’s 20 something year old girls on tiktok who do their makeup, and it’s all Drunk Elephant and things that 10-year-olds really don’t need on their skin,” one employee said.

What is Drunk Elephant?
If you’re anything like me you’ve probably never heard of Drunk Elephant before, so allow me to explain. Drunk Elephant is a skin-care brand known for being “anti-aging”, using chemicals such as retinol, and for its adorable packaging.

Essentially what’s happening is these children are seeing this beautiful/flawless influencer using a product with really cute packaging, and they immediately want that product because of the fact that a beautiful person is using it, without knowing what the product actually is or does. So what are the dangers of using products, such as Drunk Elephant (which contains retinol), at that young of age?

“Well it can cause irreversible damage to your skin at that age. To put it into perspective, it’s like taking too much medicine when you’re sick then getting sick because of it, and needing medicine to fix it but you can’t because of the tolerance you’ve built up in the process,” another employee said. “These young girls are using anti-aging products on skin that hasn’t even started the aging process, and so rather than never aging, their skin would be aging faster, so instead of looking 20 in their 20s, they’d look a year, or even several years, older.”

All in all, I’d say that shopping for skincare products and makeup that young is a little wild, but to each their own as long as they’re staying safe and treating their skin nicely.

What are your thoughts on 10-year-olds in Sephora?

*Employees remained anonymous in respect to corporate policies.