Burn notice: Gen Z and the terrifying rise of extreme tanning
Clark is far from alone. On TikTok and Instagram, posts with the hashtag 'sunbed' number more than 500,000. Last year, a survey from skin cancer charity Melanoma Focus found that 28% of UK adults use sunbeds, but this rose to 43% among those aged 18 to 25. This new generation of younger tanning obsessives will go to extreme lengths to darken their skin. Some track the UV index – the level of the sun's ultraviolet radiation – and deliberately sit in the sun at the most dangerous times of day. Others use unregulated nasal tanning sprays and injections, which rely on a chemical to darken the skin.
All the people under 30 I spoke to for this article know how dangerous tanning is. NHS guidance states that there is no safe or healthy way to get a tan and advises keeping out of the sun between 11am and 3pm, wearing sunscreen of at least factor 30, and covering up with clothing, hats and sunglasses. Dr Zoe Venables, a consultant dermatologist at Norfolk and Norwich University hospitals, with an interest in skin cancer epidemiology, says that when skin turns darker after UV exposure it 'suggests you're damaging those cells in your skin'.
Sunbeds are categorised by the World Health Organization (WHO) as 'dangerous' – with their cosmetic use increasing incidences of skin cancers and driving down the age at which skin cancer first appears. It says people who have used a sunbed at least once at any point in their lives have a 20% greater chance of developing melanoma – the deadliest of the three most common forms of skin cancer – than someone who hasn't. For someone who has used a tanning bed for the first time before the age of 35, there is a 59% greater chance of developing melanoma.
Despite this stark reality, having a tan is still presented to many young people as aspirational – whether it's faux tan-lines appearing on catwalks or bronzed influencers on holidays in Dubai. Many sunbed shop owners sell tanning as a form of 'self-care', while influencers post 'come for a sunbed with me' videos. Perhaps most perniciously, some sunbed shops even make light of the known risk associated with them. One meme shared on Instagram by a tanning salon overlays the text: 'When someone tells you sunbeds are bad for you' with a clip from the sitcom Benidorm, in which the character Madge Harvey says: 'I spy with my little eye something beginning with AB: absolute bollocks.'
Emily Harris, 23, from Leeds, uses sunbeds. Her parents both work for the NHS and have warned her about the risks. But she says that having spent most of her teenage years in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by various global conflicts and the ever-looming presence of climate breakdown, the dangers of a sunbed seem small by comparison. 'You can die of anything – do you know what I mean?' she says.
While Harris, who works in sales, can't afford to use sunbeds all the time, she uses them whenever she has 'a bit of spare money', making use of the deals that salons offer. Before a recent holiday, she bought a package that gave her unlimited minutes, with a daily limit, for four weeks. 'I was going every day,' Harris says, which she admits 'is a bit silly', but adds: 'I was trying to make the most of the package.'
As well as using tanning beds, Harris is 'obsessed with tracking the UV', and has the index on the lock-screen of her phone. She and her colleagues plan their breaks around times when the UV index is highest, so they can maximise their exposure to the dangerous radiation. A number of her friends also use nasal tanning sprays, which were the subject of a Trading Standards warning issued earlier this year that stated: 'These products can cause nausea, vomiting, high blood pressure, and even changes in mole shape and size … studies have shown a potential link to melanoma, a type of skin cancer.' Harris tried one when her friend had a spare bottle, but 'didn't see a result' so hasn't used one again. Was she worried about what might have been in it? 'To be honest, not really. I know it's bad, but at the time, I was more bothered about getting a tan.'
Nasals, as they are known, usually contain a lab-made substance called melanotan II, a chemical that darkens skin pigmentation. Though it is illegal to sell medicinal products containing melanotan II in the UK, cosmetic products fall outside that remit and are easily available on social media. Dr Suraj Kukadia, a GP known to his 282,000 TikTok followers as 'Doctor Sooj', is concerned about the popularity of nasal sprays. He says melanotan II can also lead to 'painful and sustained erections in men, kidney damage, acne and muscle-wasting'.
Holly Feldman, 25, lives in Surrey and is the CEO of a swimwear boutique. She has more than 10,000 followers on Instagram and is often sent free tanning products such as nasal sprays and injections. 'I think that was why it was so addictive for me,' she says. Though she had no idea what was in these products, and the injections in particular made her feel unwell, she says: 'I was just trying to turn a blind eye to it because I was so obsessed with how it made me look.'
Feldman recently appeared on former Love Island contestant Olivia Attwood's ITV documentary series The Price of Perfection, in which Attwood explores the risks of various cosmetic treatments. Being on the show made Feldman realise how much potential damage she could be doing. She hasn't used a tanning injection for four months, and has reduced her use of a nasal spray to a couple of times over the past month, when previously it would have been four inhalations a day. 'I do still use sunbeds,' she says. 'But I have cut down. There was a time when I was going on them four, five, six times a week and now I only go on them once or twice.'
Data from the UK and Ireland's Sunbed Association suggests that tanning beds are most popular among 25- to 45-year-olds, and more women than men use them. But that's not to say gen Z men are free from the pressure to sport a tan.
Craig Hopkins, a 29-year-old dance teacher based in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, says he uses sunbeds to 'look like I've just come back from holiday'. He prefers the look of a 'real' tan to a fake tan, which ties in to existing social media trends such as 'looking expensive' and 'quiet luxury'.
'On Instagram especially, everyone is always on holiday, always super brown. So it's probably just trying to keep up,' Harris says. Like Harris, Hopkins also tried a nasal spray once, via a friend who used to sell them, but it made him 'feel really sick'.
Despite the known risks and side-effects, most of the young people I spoke to for this article were still willing to give nasal sprays a try. Megan Urbaniak, a 23-year-old nail technician from Rotherham, says: 'I feel as if I know a million people who use them and everyone seems to have been fine. It does kind of weird me out that they don't tell you what's in them, but I'm sure there's worse in the world.'
Urbaniak is a regular sunbed user – and has even encouraged friends to use them before going on holiday 'because it stops you from burning immediately when going in the sun'. Venables is quick to debunk claims such as this, saying that all it does is put your skin through even more 'excess UV exposure'. She points to another type of common skin cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, which is thought to be due to cumulative UV exposure.
While Urbaniak does not seem to be put off by any safety concerns, she is keen to stress that there is a 'cultural line that you probably shouldn't cross' when it comes to tanning as a white person. 'I don't think that my body is capable of going that colour, but if it was, I'd like to think someone would tell me to stop.'
That said, it isn't just white people who like to tan. Melissa Jones, 19, from Chester, says she has 'seen way more people of colour – including south-east Asian girls like me – getting into tanning. For me, it's not about being darker – it's about adding that warm, radiant glow and evening out my tone'.
Like Feldman, Jones uses the word 'addictive' in relation to her tanning habit, and thinks it helps her in her job as a content creator. Tanned skin 'looks amazing on camera and in content', she says. However, she has recently switched from using tanning beds to using only fake tan. 'I became more aware of the risks, like ageing, skin cancer, all of that.'
The WHO has urged countries to consider banning sunbeds: Australia banned all commercial sunbeds 10 years ago and Brazil banned them in 2009. Kukadia and Venables both say they would like them banned in the UK.
Jak Howell, a 26-year-old content creator from Swansea, has been urging his followers to stop using sunbeds since he was diagnosed with stage three advanced melanoma when he was 21, which his doctors were surprised to see in someone so young, and said was probably due to his use of sunbeds. Howell had been using sunbeds regularly since he was 15 (it has been illegal for under-18s to use tanning beds since 2010, but the ones Howell used weren't staffed. Customers bought tokens from a machine and slotted them into the beds). When a mole appeared on his back that 'kept bleeding and scabbing over but never healing', he sent a photograph of it to his GP and was immediately referred to hospital.
He underwent radiotherapy and surgeries to remove his lymph nodes, but these failed to remove the cancer. Eventually, after a year of immunotherapy, which 'completely knocks you for six', he went into remission. Howell now wants to see sunbeds banned. He tells young users: 'OK, it hasn't happened yet, but it could happen. And when it does happen, it is far, far worse than anything I could ever describe and you could ever imagine.'
For many young people, though, the allure of the sunbed's 'instant fix' is too great to resist. And it's not as if this is the first time young people have put themselves at risk. As Kukadia points out: 'If alcohol was discovered or invented now, it would be illegal.' But tanning does feel different from other classic rebellious pursuits such as binge drinking, cigarettes and drugs because people don't do it for fun, but to achieve a certain aesthetic – a symptom, perhaps, of our screen-filtered lives.
'If I wasn't on social media, I probably wouldn't use sunbeds,' Feldman admits, but because her job requires social media use, she can't see herself stopping.
A few years ago, Clark noticed a dark, 'pretty scary-looking' lesion on her leg, and was referred to a dermatologist. Though it didn't turn out to be skin cancer-related, she had to have it removed, and the experience has stopped her being so 'frivolous' with tanning beds.
Urbaniak can't see herself giving up either. 'If something were to go wrong, then maybe I'd reconsider,' she says. 'But I feel as if I'm in that generation where we all just live in denial until something happens.'
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