Can Tweakments Make a Young Face Look Older?

Can having tweakments in your twenties make you look older? Yes it can. That was the gist of a recent, thought-provoking newspaper article suggesting that Gen Z faces are ageing differently to millennials. More specifically, the article suggested that while millennials tend to have a cautious approach to procedures and look great as a result, Gen Z tend to jump in too soon and too hard, with unfortunate results.

Why are Gen Z looking older than Millennials?

The main argument was that Gen Z are having more tweakments than actually suit them. It was also pointed out that they’re overly keen on active skincare and vaping – obviously a bad idea for health/ looks/ skin health at any age – so they are looking old beyond their years. Millennials, on the other hand, who have taken a stealthier approach to managing their faces, are looking younger than you’d expect.

Should Gen Z be having tweakments at all?

You’ll have your own views on this, but I reckon the less the better. Sure, I’d never want to stop a 20-something who grinds their teeth from having toxin in over-tight jaw muscles, or tell someone desperate to normalise the look of an unusual nose not to try having its appearance adjusted with injectable fillers, but all the rest? Not so much.

How do tweakments make young faces look older?

You wouldn’t think that any treatment – muscle relaxing toxins, or contouring, plumping fillers – that can help older faces look younger could have the opposite effect in young faces. And yet there’s something about inappropriate tweakments that make younger faces look harder and older, and takes away the youthful softness that was there before. I wish Gen Z would relax and appreciate their own natural beauty and charm rather than chasing after the bigger lips and sharper cheeks that end up making them look more like each other and less like themselves. Gen Z are jumping in far too soon with all this.

Gen Z don’t need aggressive skincare

Again, young faces (actually, all faces) don’t need complex, 10-step skincare regimes involving multiple acids, retoinoids and exfoliators on a daily basis. All of these products can have a role – but not all at once. That way lies compromised skin barriers and perioral dermatitis.

Gen Z often choose the wrong practitioners

And I also wish Gen Z chose better aesthetic practitioners, who would tell them all this and send them off with some positive reinforcement and appropriate skincare rather than simply taking their money and giving them the treatments they imagine they need.

But I know that Gen Z is price-conscious so they’ll choose cheaper treatment providers – people who don’t have a medical background, or much training or expertise – and who will simply inject wherever they’re asked. That’s a perennial problem for the tweakments industry until the regulations for licensing aesthetic providers become law.

In the meantime, you can find the type of practitioners I really trust and recommend – who will give you the right type of advice – on The Tweakments Guide practitioner finder.