DRUNK ELEPHANT is the #4 Trending Skincare Line on TikTok – Is It Suitable For Young Skin?
There's been a lot of talk about the skincare line Drunk Elephant and whether or not it’s suitable for young skin.
Apart from the shock of 10 year olds using a $60 moisturizer, the concern seems to be focused on the product’s active ingredients and whether or not they're appropriate for preteen skin.
Drunk Elephant skincare certainly has a fair amount of active ingredients, most having high concentrations of those active ingredients. Upon examining their formulations, it's clear that ingredient lists are long, averaging 40 ingredients per product with some amounting in upwards of 65 ingredients in a single formulation.
Generally, when a formulation contains a laundry list of ingredients, it’s prioritizing optimal viscosity and stability, not skin viability. Additionally, these laundry lists of ingredients typically contain an exorbitant amount of highly concentrated stabilizers and preservatives which can wreak havoc over time.
Nonetheless, I had yet to treat a preteen face using their products – until now.
I recently had a 12yo girl in with a rabid case of perioral dermatitis.
Visibly, her skin was acutely inflamed, presenting with tiny pustules. She reported her skin as feeling extremely itchy paired with a burning sensation. She also explained that the area would get particularly dry, causing the skin to perpetually slough and peel.
Through our dialogue, I learned her daily skincare routine. She went on to explain it was when she added 2 Drunk Elephant products into her daily regimen, that within a 2 week time frame, her skin took a turn for the worst.
Unnecessary or overuse of active ingredients such as Retinol, Alpha Hydroxy Acids or Niacinamide can disrupt the skin's natural microbiome, allowing for an excess of bacteria and fungus to make its way onto the skin, enabling susceptibility to infection.
In the case of this young girl, it resulted in a severe onset of perioral dermatitis. These symptoms include inflammation, paired with tiny superficial pustules and flaky skin concentrated around the nose and mouth area. The main culprit to a compromised skin barrier is almost always due to the overuse of active ingredients.
Less is always more when treating a disrupted skin barrier.
I walked her through how best to move forward in caring for her skin and provided an explanation of how her skin likely arrived in such a state. There's not much you can or should do with a 12 year olds skin. In this instance, best practice was to neutralize the inflammation and decrease the acidity.
In sum, the unbridled use of active ingredients has brought on a myriad of chronic skin disorders for adults over the last 10 years. However, regrettably and without question, as children continue to use skincare formulations with high concentrations of active ingredients, chronic pediatric skin disorders will become a common mainstay in dermatology and even aesthetic practices.
Overall, very few ingredients in Drunk Elephant’s formulations are well suited for young skin.
In reviewing the formulations, it’s clear that Drunk Elephant’s focus was nailing viscosity, texture, weight and ‘feel’ of each product, prioritizing viscosity over ingredients that contribute positively and are well tolerated by the skin will begin to show up on the faces of its users.
Schedule a skincare appointment for your preteen – they can ask as many questions as they’d like, about products, ingredients, daily routines and overall best practices for their individual skin.