How toxic masculinity and TikTok could be giving you skin cancer

If I can’t eat it, why would I put it on my skin’ – what the f*** does that mean? Why is that relevant?!”

James Welsh, a UK-based beauty and skincare content creator with more than 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, is angry. He’s reacting to the scourge of “wellness” influencers and “clean” beauty TikTokers who are publicly binning sun cream and encouraging their followers to do the same.

His most recent video, “Why Do Wellness Influencers Fear Sunscreen More Than Skin Cancer?”, is heavier in tone than the usual upbeat fare about face serums and makeup for men. It comes off the back of Welsh’s participation in the beauty, hair and wellbeing all-party parliamentary group (APPG)’s consultation on the rapid rise of skin cancer in the UK. The subsequent report, “Preventable Crisis: The Case for a National UV Safety Strategy”, makes for sobering reading.

Melanoma cases in this country have hit record levels, according to recently released data from Cancer Research UK. The number of people diagnosed with the most serious form of skin cancer has risen above 20,000 for the first time; some 2,600 people in the UK die per year from melanoma, equating to seven deaths a day.

Why are rates climbing so swiftly when 90 per cent of all non-melanoma and 86 per cent of melanoma skin cancers are entirely preventable?

The first answer is straightforward: we have a growing and ageing population. “With more people, there are more cancer cases overall, and also as a population, we are getting older – and we know that lots of types of cancer, including melanoma, are more common in older age groups,” says Dr Rachel Orritt, health information manager for Cancer Research UK. Damage done by UV is cumulative: the older you get, the more damage from sun exposure has potentially built up, and the higher your risk of developing melanoma.

But those factors “don’t explain all of that increase, though,” adds Dr Orritt.

The last few years have seen concerning shifts in attitudes towards sun exposure. Along with the decade’s questionable fashion, Y2K’s penchant for tanning has also made an unwelcome comeback. Melding Noughties trends with modern tech, these days there are tanning apps to help users boost their sun exposure and monitor UV levels, while videos posted online recommend the best places to chase rays and methods to create intentional sun “tattoos” using tan lines. Worse still, tanning beds have exploded in popularity again.

“When I started dermatology in 2021, I was really struck by the number of young people in their twenties who were coming in and getting a diagnosis of melanoma,” says Dr Amy Perkins, consultant dermatologist and spokesperson for the skin cancer charity Skcin. “It was just accepted that they all use sun beds. It’s staggering.”

Both UV rays from the sun and tanning beds are classed as group one carcinogens by the World Health Organisation, putting them in the same category as tobacco and asbestos. Yet people – particularly young people – seem unaware of the risks.

Despite it being illegal for under-18s to use sunbeds, ID checks aren’t mandatory. Recent investigations have shown that teenagers and children as young as 10 are gaining access to tanning salons, while surveys have found that over a third of 16- to 17-year-olds in the UK use them.

Any change in skin tone is your body crying out for help

Even if melanoma emerges much later, a huge amount of sun damage is incurred in our youth. Getting a single sunburn in childhood that results in blistering more than doubles your risk of melanoma later in life, while UV exposure in the first 18 years of life is the most critical factor in developing skin cancer, according to the APPG report.

Sunbed use further exacerbates the problem. Those who’ve used a sunbed at least once at any stage in their life have a 20 per cent higher risk of developing melanoma, and using a sunbed before the age of 35 increases the risk of developing melanoma by a jaw-dropping 59 per cent.

Ignorance and misinformation play a key role in the uptick in tanning. “When they get a sunburn and it’s painful, people understandably think, ‘OK, this is bad, I’m not going to do that again’,” explains Dr Perkins. “When they get a tan, everyone compliments them and it’s not painful – that positive reinforcement is built in.”

But, ultimately, the aim should be to never change colour. “Any change in skin tone is your body crying out for help – a representation of the DNA being damaged and trying to protect you from cancer risk,” warns Dr Perkins. There is no such thing as a “safe” tan, and the idea that getting a “base tan” will protect you from skin cancer is total nonsense.

The dissemination of harmful misinformation doesn’t stop there. Social media is riddled with “wellness” influencers touting their opinions as fact, yet, according to a 2025 survey, only around 4 per cent of dermatology content online is created by dermatologists. The rest is promoted by a dangerous mix of enthusiastic amateurs and bad actors trying to sell something.

“It is really concerning that anyone can share something online that is potentially going to kill someone, with no consequence and no thought about how it could actually impact people,” says Thorrun Govind, a pharmacist and healthcare commentator.

This reached a fever pitch last year when The Only Way is Essex star turned collagen brand flogger Samantha Faiers proudly told her 2.5 million Instagram followers that she didn’t use sun cream on herself or her three young children because it was “toxic”, and they had built up a “good tolerance” to the sun.

The “sun cream is toxic” rhetoric has been building for years and goes hand in hand with the craze for “clean” beauty and an obsession with all things “natural”. But there is zero scientific evidence that sun cream is in any way “toxic” – nor that wearing SPF causes, rather than prevents, cancer, as some of these quacks claim.

It is really concerning that anyone can share something online that is potentially going to kill someone

Alongside these lies sits the myth of vitamin D “maxxing”, with certain influencers claiming that wearing sun cream is stopping us from getting the required amount of vitamin D by blocking UVB rays. In theory, sunscreen use would, indeed, lower vitamin D levels if used on every inch of the body at all times. But as a practical matter, very few people put on enough sunscreen to block all UVB light, or they use sunscreen too irregularly for it to affect vitamin D, according to an article by Harvard Medical School. One Australian study found no difference in vitamin D between adults randomly assigned to use sun cream one summer and those assigned a placebo cream. And anyone worried about being low on vitamin D can simply obtain more through their diet or by taking a supplement.

Yet it’s difficult to combat sensationalist content when it is favoured by social media algorithms, pushed more frequently to users over “boring” factual posts, the APPG heard. “Being an evidence-based healthcare professional doesn’t work as well as being a scaremongering person who’s chasing virality,” says Govind. The algorithms have incentivised literal “fake news”.

Another, more insidious issue could be the effects of toxic masculinity filtering into the mainstream, feeding an underlying belief that wearing sun cream is somehow weak or effeminate. One study published in Nature earlier this year looked at whether adherence to traditional masculinity ideologies affected sun cream use among young men. Lower odds of daily sun cream use were associated with greater adherence to traditional masculinity norms and higher scores on toughness, avoidance of femininity and “dominance”.

Dr Rakesh Anand, a consultant dermatologist and spokesperson for the British Skin Foundation, agrees that “trying to get men to wear sunscreens is difficult, they do wear it less frequently. They see it as a feminine thing, and I think that’s a culture that’s got to change.”

Altering this narrative matters; when looking at data from 2018, the mortality rate for skin cancer was higher for men in 27 out of 31 European countries analysed.

We all need to get better at protecting our skin from the sun, but there is another factor making factor 50 even more crucial: climate change. More scorching days are likely to lead to more high-risk behaviour change.

“I am concerned about climate change and increasing temperatures because it’s seeing us spend more time outside and expose more skin, which could result in an increased risk,” says Cancer Research UK’s Dr Orritt.

It’s not all bad news. The APPG’s report gave multiple clear recommendations to shift the dial. That includes using the Online Safety Act to further compel social media platforms to take more responsibility for curbing and censoring misleading content, and making UV safety a compulsory part of the secondary school curriculum. Dr Perkins’s work with Skcin often centres around re-educating young people; a new campaign, entitled “Expose the Glow”, sees experts go into secondary schools and myth-bust misinformation around tanning and sunscreen to instil good habits.

Other campaigns are pushing to scrap VAT on sunscreen to make it more affordable and to ban sunbeds altogether, following in the footsteps of countries like Australia and Brazil. The latter could prevent 1,206 melanoma cases, 207 deaths and nearly 4,000 additional skin cancers.

On an individual level, it’s never too late to change your ways, no matter what your age. “Protect your skin with sunscreens, avoid the sun between 11am and 3pm, check the UV levels – and if they’re over three, you need to be more careful,” advises Dr Anand. “The most important thing to remember is that sun protection is mainly about behaviour and that the majority of skin cancer cases are preventable.”

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