I shouldn’t be surprised that I don’t trust any skincare products that promise me healthier, more glowing skin results. As a teenager, I was tricked into a painful beauty routine that involved scraping my face with sharp pieces of apricot pits and then putting on a fancy rubbing alcohol that promised a tingle that felt more like a four-alarm fire sensation. So for most of my adult life, I’ve only done the bare minimum for my face a quick wash with a very boring but dermatologist-approved drugstore cleanser, a lot of sunscreen (not as religiously as I should have, at least until a few years ago), a little moisturizer, and a very occasional sheet mask as a fun spa day self-care ritual with my daughters at home.
My Gen Z daughter on the other hand, has made a skincare routine that would make a TikTok beauty influencer proud. It includes several products from Korea, masks twice a week, and tools to make sure everything goes on smoothly and evenly. She doesn’t have any makeup on, but her skin looks like a celebrity’s. But could putting in a little more effort and using a lot more products in my beauty routine help my skin look younger and give me that dewy magic? I decided to try out her skincare routine to see if it worked.
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What My Daughter Does to Take Care of Her Skin
I think Gen Z will have few wrinkles well into their 70s, based on what I saw when my daughter opened her big skincare basket. It was nice to see that many of the skin care ingredients that dermatologists recommend over and over again were in the product. Some of these are hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, and retinols. And she already puts on a lot of high-quality sunscreen every day.
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This is what she does every day to take care of her skin:
- Double Cleansing She starts by using an oil-based cleanser on dry skin. After rinsing the oil-based cleanser off, she uses a water-based cream cleanser.
- Peeling Pads with Phyto Enzymes When my daughter was a teenager, she had some acne, but now she uses this on her cheeks and forehead to keep her skin clear.
- She puts on Niacinamide Serum once a day to help her skin look brighter.
- Facial oils She doesn’t have any right now but she’s used them to moisturize her skin and a gua sha stone to massage it.
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- Moisturizer or sunscreen In the morning, she puts on sunscreen with a high SPF and in the evening, she puts on moisturizer.
In addition, she is much more careful about using face masks as part of her routine She uses two a week: a clay mask and a sheet mask that is right for her skin at the time.
What Happened When I Followed the Gen Z Skincare Routine
It was time to start my new routine after a very detailed (and really fun) show and tell. For a whole week I followed her advice and scrubbed swabbed and softened my face. This is what I learned:
I had to change her skincare routine a little bit to make it work for me.
It’s clear that skin needs change as you get older over time. I tried all of her products at least a couple of times, but some of them seemed a little too harsh, so I switched them out for ones that were better for my skin type instead. I traded the peeling pads for a toner with hyaluronic acid and squalane that I got as a Christmas gift and have used on and off since then After a few tries, I switched her second cleanser for my favorite one instead. I also used my own sheet mask for anti-aging instead of hers for blemishes.
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To be honest, I was most skeptical about the double cleanse method. It was like the rinse and repeat shampoo directions, which seemed like they were just trying to get you to use the product faster than you needed to use it. But the oil-based cleanser seemed to make my skin softer than my usual combination of cleanser and moisturizer could.
Gen Z has a few cool tricks up their sleeves I always love learning a new hack like my daughter’s pro tip to use a gua sha to press a sheet mask more firmly onto your face. (I hate how they always seem like they’re going to slide off, but this fixed that problem!)
My skin definitely looked younger than before. It felt a little softer and glowed a little more overall. At the end of the week, I got the biggest sign that I had turned back time on my face: a big fat pimple on my chin. (Perhaps it’s time to finally use an enzyme peel!)
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I think I need to do a little more to help my skin. It’s time to switch from my low-maintenance skincare routine to one that requires more work and care. Adding an anti-aging toner and more masks to my skincare routine seems doable, especially if I have my own Gen Z skin-care expert with me. I might also be stealing her oil-based cleanser more often or buying my own. I may not be able to redo the bad skin care I did in my teens and 20s, and I definitely can’t get my daughter’s glow back on my own skin but a little more effort will clearly go a long way toward maybe being mistaken for an older Millennial on the street. And I would see that as a big win indeed.
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