This 15-year-old launched her skincare line at Sephora. Kids as young as 8 attended.

Gulp. If that headline bloomed a pit of dread in your stomach, you're not alone. 

The beauty brands are coming for our kids. 

For the uninitiated, the news is this: Salish Matter, 15-year-old daughter of YouTube celebrity Jordan Matter, has launched her skincare brand Sincerely Yours at Sephora. 

Watch Kelly McCarren on whether teens are driving up beauty prices, on the You Beauty podcast. Post continues below.

Salish and her father, whose combined reach amounts to an eye-watering 32 million YouTube subscribers, create the kind of addictive, annoying YouTube content that younger kids lap up: brightly-coloured videos, click-driven content and edits that make parents cringe and tweens beg for more. 

Drawing a reported 80,000 (yes, that's an entire stadium full of Gen Alpha fans and, presumably, their parents) attendees at New Jersey's America Dream Mall, the official launch of Sincerely Yours was Beatlemania levels of chaos.

Reports cited that attendees as young as eight years old were perched on their parents' shoulders for a chance to purchase the products, which sold out in under an hour.

But crowd control aside, the entire concept of Salish, a child herself, marketing cosmetics and skincare to her definitely-still-in-primary-school fan base, should be raising all kinds of red flags.

And she's just the tip of the iceberg.

Image: Instagram/ @salishmatter.

Last week, it was announced that actor Shay Mitchell has launched a new skincare brand for kids.

The K-beauty-inspired brand, named Rini, promotes itself as a "thoughtfully crafted" line that aims to "nuture healthy habits" and "spark confidence."

But do children really need skincare?

The rise of the Sephora Kids.

Most of us blessed to have a tween girl in our lives will have noticed over the past year or so an increasing obsession for Sephora, Mecca, and all things skincare.

In fact, at this very moment, parents are getting Christmas wish lists laden with the kind of beauty products once reserved for the generation above, from a kid whose knowledge of various brands, active ingredients and 'it girl' must-have products would rival your average beauty editor.

And look — let us not forget the fervour with which we used to lust after Australis eyeliner and clear mascara (remember that?) back in the nineties.

Dolly Magazine initiated most of us into the world of cosmetics well before we were old enough to work an after-school job, but the influence — and money —behind funnelling kids into beauty products just cannot compare to the juggernaut that is today's social media-fuelled frenzy.

The data shows an astonishing financial commitment from Gen Alpha when it comes to cosmetics. In 2023 alone, children aged six to 12 spent an estimated $4.7 billion on skin care and makeup.

Salish Matter and her dad Jordan Matter. Image: Instagram

Teen spending, covering makeup, skincare, and fragrance, grew by 23 per cent year-on-year in 2023, an acceleration rate that is more than double the growth observed in the general consumer beauty market.

And we're not talking dressing up in Mum's eyeliner or secretly wearing coloured Lipsmackers to school: these are tweens and teens consuming hours of content per week on how to perfect a 10-step skincare routine.

One of the biggest concerns to emerge from parents and dermatologists alike is that many of these kids — with their naturally poreless baby skin that has never even seen a crinkle, let alone a wrinkle — are experimenting with 'actives', the powerful ingredients found in 'cosmeceuticals'.

Salish Matter and her dad Jordan Matter. Image: Getty.

But for all the worry about ingredients they don't need, it's the ones they do need that have dermatologists sounding the alarm bells. 

Research from medical journal Pediatrics indicates a clear failure in Gen Alpha when it comes to prioritising essential preventative care in beauty regimens.

One study analysing the complex skincare routines of girls aged seven (!!) to 18 found that only 26 per cent included sunscreen. This alarming failure rate is of particular concern here in Australia, where we have the highest skin cancer rates of anywhere in the world. 

'Pearl clutching over the wrong issue'.

In last week's episode of Mamamia's You Beauty podcast, editor Justine Cullen spoke about Salish Matter's brand launch frenzy, and the wider trend of tween beauty, with a nuanced take. 

"There's been a lot of pearl-clutching over Sephora tweens," she told host Kelly McCarren, "but I think we're pearl-clutching in the wrong direction. It's misdirected."

Cullen said that while we should rightly be concerned about tweens and teens using actives that they've been influenced on by older creators online, there's a more sinister play underway. 

Listen to the full episode of You Beauty here. Post continues below.

"Obviously, we want our kids' skin barriers to be healthy and all of those kinds of things, but I think [we need to worry more] about how we are setting our children up on a path of capitalism, on this purchasing path from such a young age.

"We are essentially onboarding them into a world where they can just be marketed to constantly, and I think that is a worry. Girlhood used to be probably the most important phase of life when it came to setting up who you were going to be.

"And now, girlhood is just a marketing demographic. And I think that that's pretty scary."

"Ulta Beauty, which is a Sephora competitor, are now hosting tween birthday parties in store," Cullen continued. 

"The idea of embedding our milestone moments — these emotional, pivotal childhood core memories with capitalism… it does make me very nostalgic for a simpler time."

The scariest thing, she concludes, is that, ultimately, we're the ones responsible for this obsession. 

"We can't pearl-clutch when it's our fault," said Cullen. 

"I think we can be concerned. We need to do something about it, but it came from us. They're imitating us, and that's what I find more scary. It's insidious. We're all doing it too."

Feature image: Instagram/@salishmatter.