Teen Girls Rival Adults In Beauty Product Use, Study Links Social Media To Higher Numbers

Teens Are Using Beauty Products Like Adults, and Almost Nobody Checks the Label

Beauty influencers and hair tutorials aren’t just shaping how teenagers feel about themselves. A new pilot study suggests they may be shaping something else too: how many personal care products teens use every single day, many of which carry ingredients that scientists still know very little about.

Researchers surveyed 143 high school students in New Jersey and found that teenage girls used about 14 different products a day, roughly what adult women use. Boys used about half that. Between shampoo, deodorant, foundation, and perfume, these teens went through a lot of bottles and tubes, but almost nobody stopped to read what was actually in them. Fewer than 1 in 5 said they check ingredient labels, and barely anyone used an app built to flag risky ingredients.

Teen Bodies Are More Vulnerable to These Chemicals Than Adult Bodies

Personal care products can be a real source of chemical exposure, according to research published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. Plenty of everyday products contain ingredients that can mess with the body’s hormone system, and that’s a bigger deal during the teen years, when the body is already going through massive hormonal shifts tied to puberty. Earlier studies have tied some of these chemicals to reproductive problems and even to changes in when puberty starts.

Part of the problem is scale. More than 10,000 different chemicals show up across personal care products combined, and only a small slice have ever been rigorously tested for health effects. Teenagers have barely been studied at all when it comes to this kind of exposure, which is exactly why this survey stands out.

Fragrance was everywhere in this group. More than three-quarters said they wear perfume or cologne at least sometimes, and over half had worn some that same day. Basics like toothpaste, body wash, and face cream were used by nearly everyone. And among girls specifically, roughly two-thirds had worn makeup within the past 24 hours.

Following Beauty Influencers Predicts Higher Product Use

Even after researchers accounted for things like gender, grade, and parents’ education level, social media habits kept showing up as one of the strongest predictors of how many products a teen used. Following an influencer who sells their own product line was tied to using 30% more products. Watching hair or beauty tutorials was tied to 40% more. And teens who spent more than about two hours a day on social media used more products overall than those who spent less.

Nearly 4 in 10 students said they follow celebrities or influencers who sell or promote products, climbing to almost half among girls. More than 40% said they’d bought something after seeing an influencer use it, and about 3 in 10 blamed a social media ad. Instagram and YouTube were the most popular platforms, followed by TikTok and Snapchat, and 91% of these students had a smartphone.

Few Teens Check Ingredient Labels Despite Heavy Use

Plenty of teens said they try to avoid products with certain chemicals, 41% in fact, but that good intention rarely became a real habit. Almost none regularly checked labels, and almost nobody used a safety app to double-check their choices.

There was one encouraging thread. Teens who specifically looked for labels like “natural,” “non-toxic,” or “eco-friendly” tended to use fewer products overall, which hints that a little safety awareness goes a long way. But the researchers caution that terms like “clean beauty” or “paraben-free” are marketing language, not proof of anything, and teens can be just as easily fooled by “greenwashing,” where a product looks safer than it actually is thanks to clever branding.

Teens whose parents had less education tended to use more products, a median of 19 a day compared with 13 and 11 among peers whose parents had a college or graduate degree. That gap showed up even though this group wasn’t any less likely to check labels or avoid certain chemicals than anyone else.

Most of these teens, especially with beauty products, were making their own purchasing decisions with little parental input. That independence, paired with heavy social media use and low label-reading, is exactly the combination researchers say deserves a closer look.

There’s a silver lining buried in a separate 2025 study the authors point to. When influencers were taught about harmful chemicals and helped create accurate content, their followers walked away more aware and more likely to check ingredients before buying. The same platforms driving the problem might also be part of the fix.

Rutgers University researchers ran the study with Princeton High School, and students helped shape the survey, including writing the section on social media use from their own lives. Most of the 143 participants, 94 in total, were Princeton High students surveyed in 2024, with the remaining 49 drawn from a Rutgers summer program for local teens in 2025. Participants were about 16 on average and came from a mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds, though the group skewed toward white and Asian students.

This is still an early, small study, and it can’t prove social media causes teens to buy more. But the pattern is hard to ignore: teenagers are using personal care products at adult levels, driven in part by screens most of them check for hours a day, with almost no one pausing to ask what’s actually in the bottle.

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Disclaimer: This article is based on a peer-reviewed pilot study and is intended for general informational purposes only. It is not medical advice. The study identifies associations, not proven cause-and-effect relationships, and its findings come from a small, geographically limited sample that may not reflect all teenagers. Readers with specific health concerns should consult a qualified healthcare provider.

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