What Comes Around Goes Around: Gen Z Is Bringing Back Tanning Beds, Which Are Classified as Carcinogenic to Humans
The World Health Organization puts indoor tanning beds in the same cancer-causing category as cigarettes, asbestos and plutonium. Gen Z is climbing back into them anyway, and they’re calling it “tanmaxxing.”
A wave of young “tanfluencers” is timing UV exposure with apps, filming sessions for #TanTok and experimenting with unregulated “tanning pills,” USA Today reports. One creator captioned a video “a little burn goes a long way.” Another posted “tanning bed hallelujah,” a nod to the Justin Bieber song.
“It’s terrifying,” Dr. Shereen Teymour, a board-certified dermatologist in New York, told USA Today. “It’s essentially tanning culture that’s kind of getting a new Gen Z rebrand.”
A recent American Academy of Dermatology survey found 20% of Gen Z respondents said a tan mattered more to them than preventing skin cancer, and 64% had run into sunscreen misinformation online. At least 1 in 5 Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime.
Some tanfluencers are going further, buying non-FDA-approved Melanotan II pills and nasal sprays online, marketed as “Barbie peptides,” to darken their skin faster. Teymour says people assume the products are harmless wellness supplements. They aren’t.
“Tanning is starting to be packaged almost like a beauty routine or a wellness habit rather than what it actually is,” Teymour said. “It’s literally your skin saying, ‘I’m being damaged, let me produce more pigment to try to protect myself.'”
