The Impact of Social Media on Skin Care: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Introduction. Social media has completely taken over multiple aspects of our lives, it has a prominent influence on an individual’s decisions, particularly regarding their lifestyle. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok play a prominent role in one’s choices on their skin care, cosmetics, aesthetic procedures, and dermatological treatments. The aim of the study. To review current literature on the role of social media and its impact on skin care. Materials and methods. Search databases – Google Scholar, Research4life, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Scopus were used. Employing content analysis, methods of comparative analysis & bibliosemantics the literature survey concerning social media and its impact on social media, was conducted. A total of 50 English language publications were selected and thoroughly reviewed based on their relevance to the subject. Results. The beauty industry uses social media as a marketing strategy to reach out to its consumers around the globe, particularly targeting consumers like adolescents and women with skin problems. In recent years, social media has turned from an entertainment platform to an educational platform for many users, providing awareness about various skin-related conditions such as skin cancer and even acne treatment. Dermatologists and medical aestheticians are being proactive in sharing information about common skin conditions. Although currently the dependency on social media has increased due to a variety of reasons, there exists a large amount of false and dubious information on the social media posted by unverified users with no legitimate medical background, hence using these sites for making choices related to our skin care is still a debatable option. Conclusions. A dermatologist is no longer the sole patient advisor, this role being gradually replaced by social media. As a result, social media users are well informed having access to a variety of information, resulting in a large number of people being influenced over their skin care choices. This may do more harm than profit, since every skin is fairly individual organ and a generalized skin care routine may not provide the desirable look one strives for.