From playtime to Primers

Every single one of us has played games like Ghar-Ghar or Teacher-Teacher at some point in our childhoods, assuming the roles of the people we were exposed to every day. The lives of the adults around us fascinated us and we just couldn’t wait to grow up. Little did we know that adulting felt like a dream back then because we looked at it through the charm and weightlessness of childhood. Our brains were fogged with naivete to comprehend that this period in our lives would leave, never to return or be restored to its early glee. Now that the years have passed, we realize how truly carefree we were, living in our own make-believe stories, shielded from the real world. But even now that our responsibilities swarm us, a good childhood memory makes a reappearance to send us on a nostalgic trip and make us feel grateful to have been able to experience an untroubled upbringing.

The essence of childhood, however, is being lost of late in the children of the upcoming generations. Instead of stepping out to play or socialize with other kids their age, children of the Gen Alpha generation (born between 2010 and 2024)  are becoming increasingly obsessed with social media presence and vanity. These young creators constantly put up product reviews, clothing hauls, lip sync, and dance videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram looking for followers and social validation. Tweens specifically going gaga over skincare are now being referred to as ‘Sephora Kids’, named after a multinational retailer of beauty and skincare products called Sephora. The social media rule of the Gen Z era is slowly seeing a decline as more influencers from Gen Alpha keep popping up and widening the generational gap. They tweet, they trend, and they think we’ve reached our end. But what’s ironic is that their childhood years have ended even before they could even begin. The inception of the social media age has stolen the opportunity to have a normal childhood in these kids by virtually giving them access to anything and potentially adultifying their brains. You can tell what generation a person belongs to if you ask them to describe their childhood in 3 words; a Gen Z go-to would be something like loom bands, Beyblades, jim-jam biscuits, while a Gen Alpha kid may say things like Roblox, lip gloss tutorials, Skibidi toilet rizz (you get it). The extent of the exposure that these impressionable minds get to social media and the internet, in general, raises many questions about how it affects their brain and personality development, the first of which is, is the childhood of Sephora kids being lost due to adultification?

The prevalence of social media and the audience’s dependence on it has a huge role to play in why Gen Alpha may choose to turn into influencers at such young ages, or even consume content online featuring either brainrot videos or things like makeup and fashion hauls that are ideally irrelevant to preadolescents. What is more concerning is that a lot of these pages are run by adults in these kids’ lives, like the page run by Audrina with her daughter Ashley. These adults usually capitalize on the creator’s engagement for their personal benefits, because let’s be real, how much knowledge does a preteen have about how to utilize their fame or invest their earnings? This brings us to the crux of the matter, which is how this adultification is impeding the kids’ childhood years which are crucial for their optimal development.

Arguably, some of the most important features of childhood that are developmentally paramount are imaginary, structured, and unstructured play. Structured play is when a child plays following the rules laid by an adult, with a certain goal, while unstructured play occurs when they play in any way that interests them without fixed rules. Imaginary play is also a form of play that involves using the imagination and may also make use of imitation. A lack of these types of play in Gen Alpha kids can hamper their ability to develop creativity and imagination effectively. Engaging in imaginary play also plays a huge role in understanding social situations and roles by performing an imitation of the people seen around. Not being able to play games that involve using these skills can result in reduced social intelligence in these kids. This reduced social functioning capacity is already evidenced by the lack of respect displayed by such children toward authority figures, and it is also accompanied by behavioural disturbances. Additionally, the obsession with social media and vanity that has been fed into the minds of these young influencers can cause self-esteem issues to manifest in them at an extremely young age. For the Gen Alpha creators, there may be pressure to always look and dress a certain way to get the engagement they desire and to deliver competitive content with other creators online, while for the young viewers, the portrayal of such idealistic appearances can cause discontent in the self. This highlights how social media harms Generation Alpha, both influencers and creators alike. For Sephora kids specifically, overconsumption of beauty and skincare products also has detrimental physical effects. This is because kids of such ages should not be using products containing chemicals like retinol and glycolic acid, or endocrine-disrupting ingredients as it risks serious health issues, ranging from irritative contact dermatitis to premature onset of puberty or even hormone-sensitive forms of cancer.

Overall, the advent of social media and the popularity of beauty brands that have grown exponentially is a major cause for concern as they are being specifically marketed toward children of such young ages. This poses a threat to how their ideal development should occur because it distorts the social and personal meanings of how we view childhood today.

References

Bachdal Johansen, C. & Re:solve Global Health. (2024, April 2). Sephora Kids skincare overuse calls for responsible action. ReSolve GlobalHealth. https://www.re-solveglobalhealth.com/post/sephora-kids-skincare-overuse-calls-for-responsible-action#:~:text=This%20is%20because%20the%20Sephora,not%20be%20used%20by%20children. 

Courtney. (2024, April 17). The Difference Between Structured vs. Unstructured Play | Pathways.org [Video]. Pathways.org. https://pathways.org/watch/structured-vs-unstructured-play/ 

Cushman, O. (2024, April 3). The children of Generation Alpha have a technology problem. Massachusetts Daily Collegian. https://dailycollegian.com/2024/04/the-children-of-generation-alpha-have-a-technology-problem/ 

Iyer, A. (2024, March 6). Internet culture harms Gen-Alpha development. The Tide. https://thermtide.com/22600/popular/internet-culture-harms-gen-alpha-development/ 

Izea. (2024, May 23). The Top Gen Alpha Influencers - IZEA. IZEA. https://izea.com/resources/the-top-gen-alpha-influencers/ 

Taylor, M. (2024, January 22). “Sephora kids” and the booming business of beauty products for children. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240119-sephora-kids-and-the-booming-business-of-beauty-products-for-children 

About the Author

Tanveer Saini

Third-year student and Member of the PsyCreative Column

Tanveer is someone who enjoys doing a bit of everything; she’s read a book or two, has a taste for films (she’s one of those annoying appreciators of cinema), has a fondness for most genres of music, and will incessantly be found dissecting at least one of these. Conversations with her will almost always involve subjects like dogs, impressionism, quantum physics, philosophy, reasons for existence, and the like. She’s got pretty concrete opinions about mostly everything but that doesn’t stop her from trying to broaden her knowledge even further. But most importantly, having a spontaneous laugh with her is quite easy because she’s as unserious of a person as she is serious.