CyberDERM- The Sunscreen Company TM: Teenage Girls Burned by Indoor Tanning Epidemic

Our founder and my father, Dr. Denis Dudley, just entered the world of blogging. Say hello to The Sunscreen Doc's blog. In reading it, one fact from an info-pic really shook me to the core. Skin cancer is the number one cancer killer of women aged 25-30. It prompted me to turn to the always helpful Google Trends, a site that helps you see what Google searches are on the rise. I was shocked to see that the search for 'safe indoor tanning' was on the rise, and upon Googling those key words, I stumbled on to these disturbing facts from the Center for Disease Control:

For all of you with teenager daughters, that is anywhere from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 girls in your daughter’s class frequently using these beds (on average 28 sessions per year). My first thought is that one some level, parent’s are either passively encouraging this behavior or at least tolerating it. With kids of a high school age, parents have some measure of control in terms of their kids engaging in risky and harmful behavior. Unlike with smoking or drinking, it is pretty difficult to hide tanning if teens are coming home two shades darker after school. We are starting to see most regional lawmakers invoking some measure to ban or restrict underage tanning. Hopefully, most parents will start to equate it with other illegal under age activity and make it a hard 'no' in their households.

How to we persuade our daughters?

However, without an element of education or persuasion, these daughters are at risk as soon as they are of legal age and leave home. It seems odd to me that there is not more work done on how to persuade youth of the apparent dangers in the same way that we do for smoking, drugs, alcohol and teen sex. Having said that, we have not found a magic bullet to countering these other behaviours so maybe psychology is overrated.

In trying to go back to my own teenage self, I would think that vanity has to be one way of possibly winning the argument. I know that smoking always lost its allure for me after my mother’s stories of the purse-string type of wrinkles that it can cause. Youth may not understand mortality but the image of your youth being sucked out of your skin is quite compelling.

The question then is what type of beauty standard is most helpful to espouse. Should we encourage kids to love their palest version of themselves? Or, should we show them the potential with faux bronzers? The Archives of Dermatology, a study by the University of Massachusetts handed out sunless self-tanners while giving sun education and showed a decrease of 33% in the control group of sunbathing. However, another study showed that those who were given sunless tanning lotions were more likely to engage in indoor tanning beds, sunbathing and less likely to use sunscreen. Certainly, some were afraid of using sunscreen with their spray tans for fear of blotchiness [ Editors Note: A lotion or cream sunscreen like our Simply Zinc Sun Whip or Every Morning Sun Whip should not dissolve your tan. The alcohol used as a solvent in spray sunscreens could.] Clearly sun education has to be part of the conversation. I also think it is important to show how make-up and skincare can give bright and beautiful skin no matter your choice.

I also wonder whether the more young adults adopt a healthy and holistic lifestyle, you might see behaviours like this being curbed. Organic food, yoga and just an overall health consciousness had not emerged when I was a teenager. However, as Millennials start to have kids and raise them on a kale rich existence, maybe the 'body is my temple' mentality will have an impact. Perhaps, it is only a passing trend. Or, maybe it is a lifestyle where inconsistencies like sipping on a almond butter smoothie while in the tanning bed can exist.