Is shopping for skincare now more complicated than ever?

This ingredient vs. that ingredient

As beauty scientists improve current formulas and discover new ingredients, we’re bound to see a milieu of new products arrive on shelves claiming to be better than the last.

However, while learning about the benefits of a single ingredient is easy enough, obtaining accurate information about how certain ingredients interact when combined with others is not as clear-cut.

Last year, House of Naturals and Simple published a consumer report titled The Simple Truth. It found that 62 percent of participants wanted skincare formulations and benefits to be more accessible and comprehensible.

A further 80 percent of respondents reported feeling overwhelmed and confused by the skincare industry, with those who had sensitive skin being the most affected by conflicting information.

This is extremely relatable. After years of not bothering with Vitamin C serums (I had heard they deteriorate rapidly once their bottle is opened), I finally bit the bullet after my sister recommended one. Figuring out how to work this little potion into my current skincare regime was another story.

I did what one always does in such pressing matters: I turned to Google. The search results revealed a handful of websites which claimed that niacinamide, part of my routine, doesn’t work well with Vitamin C and can cause extreme skin irritation in some people.

Meanwhile, others reported that the two ingredients work wonderfully together as they both achieve the same goal – brighter and more even complexions. After a bit more digging, I read more positive things about combining them, so I took the risk and ended up loving the result.

That said, one of the predicted beauty trends of 2024 is that vitamin C serums will be overshadowed by kojic acid – an ingredient commonly included in controversial skin-lightening creams. Given that I’ve found my groove, I think I’ll pass for now.

But it begs the question, does taking care of our faces have to be so complicated?

Trends that are not-so-universal

Part of the problem is that everyone’s skin is completely different. What works miracles for one person might worsen already existing issues for somebody else.

Looking to customer reviews before buying a new product doesn’t stand to offer much guidance for exactly this reason, while looking at the claims of widely known beauty publications can lead us down the path of buying paid-promotional products.

This issue is only further convoluted by products that go viral on social media, pushed to the forefront of the online conversation by thousands of influencers and beauty vloggers who ‘swear by’ the latest and greatest formula on the market.

Before one product can even collect dust on its platform as the ‘holy grail beauty item,’ another swoops in to claim its spot.

All of this said, it fails to mention the constant arrival of celebrity beauty brands, which fans feel obligated to buy into in order to show their allegiance to the it girl of the moment. Hailey Bieber, for example, has launched its first cleanser – despite there being no shortage of cleansers already on offer.

All of this abundance is not only confusing and overwhelming for customers, it is creating an environmental nightmare.

The wider implications

Aside from causing us to spend hours staring into our phone and aggressively Googling skincare ingredients until we border on becoming amateur dermatologists, the oversaturated beauty market has far worse consequences.

In a rat race to the top of the beauty pyramid, the pressure on brands to use holistic and natural ingredients has accelerated the hunt for some of the most rare and endangered plants available. As a result, thousands of brands are collectively depleting our planet’s natural resources, releasing chemicals into our oceans, and churning out products at extreme speed.

With all of these serums and creams needing to be packaged, the beauty industry has landed itself alongside the food industry in terms of plastic-pollution contribution.

Although many brands offer refillable pots and bottles these days, this hasn’t slowed the amount of virgin plastic being produced, as customers need that first container in order to purchase refills.

Given the state of the planet, the continuous release of more beauty products we don’t need, containing ingredients so rare that obtaining them is destroying the planet’s ecology – there has got to be an end to this madness.

At the very least, can we get some non-conflicting, science-backed information on how to combine the products we already own?