The first time 26-year-old Olivia used a sunbed, she was killing time during her gap year before starting her undergraduate degree Cambridge University. She and her best friend, both 18 at the time, had plans to travel around India, and decided they wanted to get a tan in preparation.
“We did no research whatsoever beforehand,” she tells me when we chat over the phone. “We just went to this random place in Brighton that my friend’s mum owned. To be honest, I wasn’t nervous at all — I knew it was bad for you but I didn’t think it was any worse than going in the sun for a prolonged period of time.”
That was almost ten years ago. Since then, Olivia has become a regular sunbed user. And amongst her generation, Olivia is far from alone. For some, sunbeds might seem like a relic of the late nineties and early noughties. It certainly looked that way for a while — in 2010, the government banned under-18s from using them, and three years later, research suggested that sunbed shops in the UK were on the decline.
But earlier this year, a survey from Melanoma Focus, found that 28 per cent of UK adults use sunbeds, rising to 43 per cent of 18 to 25-year-olds. Sunbeds, it seems, are back, and it is Gen Z who are leading the charge.
“I’ve got loads of friends who use them,” Olivia says. “To be honest, I think more people use them than would let on, especially before or after a holiday. I even have some guy friends who secretly use them, which I think they don’t want people to know.
“One of my friends actually just told me she’s used a sunbed every day for the last two weeks.”
By now, the dangers of sunbed use are widely-reported. The high-intensity artificial UV radiation for the beds use for quick tanning can damage the DNA in skin cells and lead to skin cancer, including melanoma, the most dangerous form. The World Health Organization classifies indoor sunbeds as being as dangerous as asbestos and cigarettes in their ability to cause cancer, placing them in the highest risk category. Those who’ve used a sunbed just once being 20 per cent more likely to develop melanoma than someone who hasn’t. For under-35s using a sunbed for the first time, that figure increases to a shocking 59 per cent.
The updated technology of modern tanning beds also has the potential of making them even more harmful. These days, you can get a tan in a sunbed in as few as four minutes, compared to the 30 minute sessions of the past, due to the beds’ stronger rays: newer sunbeds often use bulbs that emit a higher intensity of UV radiation, particularly UVB rays.
For Olivia, by the time she became aware of the extent of the potential harm sunbeds cause, she was already hooked.
“It was nearly 10 years ago when I started using them, and [the danger] definitely wasn’t reported on as widely,” she says.
Now, for Olivia, risks that come with using sunbeds are outweighed by the results.
“It just feels really good to be tanned,” she confesses. “For me, it goes in waves — honestly, If I’m feeling really down, I use them more. This year I’ve been around three or four times, so not too prolific but that’s partly because they’ve got more expensive. But I’d be so pale and pasty without them.”
So, what is driving Gen Z’s love affair with tanning? Unsurprisingly, much of it can be put down to social media. On TikTok, trips to the tanning salon have become a genre of content in their own right, with #sunbed boasting over 900 million views. From tips to get deeper tans, hacks for first timers and get ready with me videos, the app has spawned an ecosystem of sunbed related content. Influencers generate millions of views with videos of their UV lit faces lip-syncing to viral songs. And in January, Kim Kardashian showed off to her Instagram followers that she had a sunbed in her office.
Dr Leah Totton, founder of Dr Leah Cosmetic Skin Clinics thinks that social media is fuelling the trend, and that Gen Z missed much of the information about the dangers of skin cancer.
“We are seeing dangerous hashtags such as #sunbedaddiction [on social media],” she says. “It all shows the lack of education surrounding sun safety. This is not something to be taken lightly, but unfortunately a lot of Gen Z look to social media for skin care advice and are keen to follow the latest trends. There is a huge wealth of misinformation on the internet regarding sun safety and skin health right now, making social media a dangerous space, and Gen Z are extremely vulnerable to this.”
One of the more curious aspects of the youth resurgence of sunbed use is that it has coincided with the simultaneous emergence of a cult-like skincare movement amongst Gen Z — much of which revolves around SPF. As a generation, we spend more on skincare than any other. Young TikTok influencers parade their 15-step skin care routines, with extravagant products like AHAs and retinols, hailed for their anti-ageing properties. Last year, there was a flurry of controversy around one girl’s TikTok where she filmed a video starting: “Some things that I do to slow down the ageing process as a 14-year-old.”
I’m definitely addicted — there was one point that I went four times in a week. It sounds stupid, but I also wear SPF 50 on my face everyday.
24-year-old marketing assistant Maisy is at the intersection of these somewhat contradictory twin movements.
“I’ve been using sunbeds regularly for around two years,” she tells me. “I’m definitely addicted — there was one point that I went four times in a week.
“It sounds stupid, but I also wear SPF 50 on my face everyday,” she continues. “I have probably five skincare products that I use before bed as well. But for me, that’s about not getting wrinkles rather than skin cancer – when I go to sunbeds, I never tan my face.
“It’s such a vanity thing – obviously I know I should care more about my health than ageing. But I just see cancer as something that affects older people.
One of Maisy’s family members recently had a skin cancer scare, which has prompted her to reconsider her sunbed usage.
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“When that happened, I did think ‘God, if I actually did get cancer I couldn’t blame anyone but myself”, she says.
Melanoma is on the rise in the UK – Cancer Research UK predicts there will be a record 20,800 cases diagnosed this year, up from a yearly average of 19,300 between 2020 and 2022. Around 100 deaths per year are linked with sunbed use. In 2009, the US’ International Agency for Research on Cancer classified the use of UV-emitting tanning devices as carcinogenic to humans. Since then, Brazil banned tanning beds altogether, joining Iran, which had banned them a year earlier, in 2008. They are also banned in Australia.
“No tan is a safe tan unless it comes out of a bottle I’m afraid,” says Dr Ross Perry, medical director of Cosmedics skin clinics. “Social media, namely TikTok and Instagram, are glamourising and normalising having a deep tan from using a sunbed…we become absorbed into thinking there are no dangers attached, and this is a huge problem,” he continues. “Ultimately, when our body tans, it’s a reaction to damage in the skin cells as it’s exposed to UV radiation, so no matter how infrequent, it’s still not a wise thing to do.”
“It may seem fun and harmless when you’re young,” says Dr Perry, “but the risks attached in later life just aren’t worth it.”
