We’re more terrified of ageing than ever – but why?

In recent years, it feels like discussions about ‘the end of the world’ have moved from a light-hearted joke – possibly about zombies or aliens – to a frightening near reality. Every few weeks another horrific natural disaster is reported, from wildfires to floods to roof-ripping storms. This ‘climate anxiety,’ a term recently coined to describe people’s feelings of fatalism and hopelessness, was exacerbated by the pandemic, when an unseen killer virus was exhaled and transmitted between friends, family and colleagues. Now, it seems like talk of a third world war feels ever more possible. All these factors have given rise to the question: how much time have we got to live? 

In the face of approaching climate disaster, self-preservation – staying young, fit, and looking beautiful – becomes all the more vital and the only thing most of us feel like we can control. The march towards death has always been inevitable, but there is one industry that has long professed an ability to turn back the clock. Beauty brands have always marketed the impossible: youth and longevity, presenting their products as hope in a jar. But while anti-ageing has been a staple buzzword in the industry, never before have those who have been participating in it been so young or doing it with such fervour. 

Over the past two years, the volume of beauty products referencing anti-ageing rose 10 per cent, according to Business of Fashion, while this year searches surrounding Botox, dermal fillers and retinol increased 63 per cent. In 2020, the Department of Health estimated that as many as 41,000 Botox procedures were carried out on under 18s in the UK, while on TikTok teenagers are showing off their anti-ageing routines in videos titled things like “Things I do to slow the ageing process as a 14-year-old”.

Aestheticians and facialists have noticed that the age of their clients is decreasing. Jasmina Vico, a skin health and laser expert, and founder of VicoSkin, says at her clinic she has seen a “massive increase” in young people seeking treatments including for boosting collagen, tackling pigmentation and lifting. “With younger generations we are seeing much more anxiety when it comes to protecting against signs of ageing in the skin,” she says. “They are much more concerned about preventing skin ageing and staying youthful for a longer period.”

Part of this, Vico agrees, can be traced back to the current world climate. Young people, in particular, are concerned about what their futures will look like. In a 2021 survey, 60 per cent of young people said they felt extremely worried about climate change, 75 per cent said the future was frightening and 56 per cent believed that “humanity is doomed”. “We are questioning everything at this point. Maybe because we can’t control or alter time, somehow we feel we may be able to alter it by slowing our ageing process,” she says. “Everyone wants to be the best version of themselves and make their mark in a short window of time. Simply, we can’t slow time – but maybe we can alter our perception through bending our visuals, distorting the timeline.”

This is then being exacerbated, she says, by everything from viral social media filters to “the notion of success that’s tied up with great skin and looking young forever that we see in influencers and celebrities today”. If social media is to be believed, visibly ageing is a tragedy to be staved off at all costs. Getting older – for women particularly – is presented as a catastrophe. Anti-ageing “hacks” that have gone viral on TikTok include everything from not using straws, mouth taping while you sleep or not sleeping on your side, and not using the muscles in your face. Meanwhile, the digital age we’re living in means filters on Tiktok easily distort videos by adding wrinkles and jowls, along with greyed skin and hair. Reactions from users of the “Aged” filter which has over 10 billion views, are often ones of dismay and distress. The audio which plays over many of these says, “I would like to buy a gun”, as if ending their lives is preferable to appearing old.

You guys will Age . Even With all the sunscreen and skin care . You will get weaker Also . And your skin Will shrivel as well And nobody Will care Ab your clean girl Aesthetic. And then you Will be dead . Just fyi https://t.co/tcHzFu8PpD

— 5 (@reptiliactgrrl) July 14, 2023

Every generation has had their own iteration of these destructive beauty ‘self-improvements’. In the 2000s, there was the horrifically damaging diet culture: the Special K diet, the Heat magazine Circle of Shame, the slew of television shows like Supersized vs Superskinny, Fat Families, and How to Look Good Naked. These constraints on women’s bodies and lives never cease; they just morph into new forms of containment and oppression. But back in the 2000s, there were at least a few more obstacles in the way to stop total self-hatred. We would have to log on to slow dial-up internet or go into a shop to buy a magazine to inflict ourselves with unnecessary body-shaming damage. 

In 2023, it’s all so much more accessible. This new wave of monitoring our bodies has been heightened on apps such as TikTok. It’s much subtler now, more insidious, as young people video themselves undergoing ‘tweakments’ to appear younger. Travelling in the car, talking to the camera as if to a close friend, the viewer is taken on a journey from booking, to procedure, to results. A highlight reel in no more than three minutes. We are living in a kind of dystopian hellscape, where existential crisis is played out through screens that we hold nearly 24/7. All the horrors are there, from burning to rainforests to skin pricked with needles over and over. Both show annihilation in their own way: a removal of all signs of lives lived. 

In decades to come, we will look back in shock at our obsession with youthfulness. We will remember in disbelief being upsold anti-wrinkle treatments while getting a dental filling fixed. Or about the constant examination of our own faces for smile-lines and creases for any sign of a lived life, before lotions and potions are smeared across our skin. As the world outside literally burns, as wars bring death to our screens, as our hospitals fill with those on respirators gasping for another second of life. We will understand that our obsession with anti-ageing is a reaction to the signs that the world is ending, to claw back the years in any way we can. We will be horrified that we didn’t see that ageing is a privilege to be celebrated.