If you stroll by any laser clinic on a Tuesday afternoon in a mid-sized British city, you’ll notice something that ten years ago would have seemed unlikely. People in their twenties are crammed into the waiting area. People who are young today, sitting in bright clinical rooms with consent forms on their laps, getting ready to pay for treatments their parents never considered until they were well past forty, rather than forty-five-year-olds undoing sun damage from their youth. Something has changed. Although the precise location of the tipping point is still unknown, the direction is clear.
For a while, the Gen Z tanning story was concerning in the most obvious way. According to a 2024 Melanoma Focus survey, 43% of UK adults between the ages of 18 and 25 use sunbeds, which seemed to contradict what dermatologists had been saying for years. Indoor tanning devices are categorized by the World Health Organization as Group 1 carcinogens, which is the same category as asbestos and cigarettes. Using a sunbed for the first time before the age of 35 increases the risk of melanoma by 59%. The most vulnerable group published, shared, and talked about those figures, but they were mostly disregarded. Over 1.52 billion people have viewed the #sunbed tag on TikTok. On Instagram, Kim Kardashian displayed a sunbed in her workplace. With language that would make a dermatologist cringe, tanning salons began rebranding their beds as wellness tools, combining UV treatments with infrared saunas and collagen-boosting red light panels.
However, there are other stories. Another segment of the same generation has been quietly and with much less fanfare heading in the exact opposite direction, purposefully heading toward laser clinics rather than tanning beds. Prejuvenation is the term used by the aesthetic medicine industry to describe this. The concept is simple. Younger patients are taking action early, scheduling laser resurfacing and skin quality treatments in their mid-twenties to preserve what they have rather than repair what has been lost, rather than waiting for sun damage, leathery texture, and deep lines to become obvious issues requiring corrective treatment. This framework also applies to laser hair removal, which is permanent, accurate, and completely incompatible with tanning. The two are incompatible. Excess melanin on tanned skin causes laser energy to scatter toward the skin’s surface instead of the hair follicle, causing burns, hyperpigmentation, and completely ineffective sessions. Giving up sunbeds isn’t a sacrifice for Gen Z patients who are dedicated to laser hair removal, which many are due to the allure of long-term convenience. It’s a requirement for obtaining what they genuinely desire.
There’s a sense that sun protection messaging isn’t really the beauty standard doing the heavy lifting here. The skin is made of glass. The bronzed, weathered appearance that tanning culture has always promoted is nearly the exact opposite of the clear, even-toned, nearly luminous complexion that has dominated social media aesthetics for a number of years. The skin is brought closer to that standard by laser treatments, medical-grade skincare products, and regular use of SPF. It is moved away by sunbeds. That aesthetic disparity matters in ways that cancer statistics sometimes don’t for a generation that actually pays attention to the images they are surrounded by and examines their own faces on high-definition front-facing cameras more than any previous generation.
This division within Gen Z, with the laser-clinic regulars on one side and the tanners on the other, may indicate something more complex than a straightforward generational shift toward better decisions. In a world where there are always opportunities for comparison, both groups are reacting to the same underlying impulse: a desire to intentionally look good, to exert control over appearance. The method and time horizon are the areas of divergence. The post-session glow, the holiday-ready color, or what one 23-year-old from Leeds called “looking healthy” are the immediate results that sunbed users typically strive for. Because laser clients are investing in skin they won’t fully appreciate for ten years, they must be patient and have some faith in delayed results. It’s easy to assume that the health messaging isn’t what’s altering behavior when you see both trends occurring simultaneously. They are the aesthetics.
Clinics are changing. Waiting areas have a more boutique wellness feel than a clinical one. The phrase “long-term skin health plans” has replaced “one-time procedures” in consultation language. Patients who would not have been able to afford entry-level laser treatments five years ago can now do so thanks to financial models like membership programs, installment payments, and starter packages. The industry is adapting because it recognizes that it faces a generation of prospective long-term customers. Organizations like the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery offer advice to individuals who are thinking about switching on how to locate skilled professionals and comprehend which laser technologies work best for various skin tones. The data is available. The desire for it is growing as well.
