New Surveys Suggest Gen Z is Buying into Misinformation About Sun Safety

A recent article in The New York Times reported on a troubling trend: Young adults are believing misinformation about sunscreen and skin cancer, according to two new surveys.

In an online survey of more than 1,000 people published in May by the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD), 28% of 18- to 26-year-olds said they didn’t believe suntans caused skin cancer. And 37% said they wore sunscreen only when others nagged them about it.

In the second poll, published in May by the Orlando Health Cancer Institute, 14% percent of adults under 35 believed the myth that wearing sunscreen every day is more harmful than direct sun exposure. 

“While the surveys are too small to capture the behaviors of all young adults, doctors said they’ve noticed these knowledge gaps and riskier behaviors anecdotally among their younger patients, too,” the Times article says.

To an extent, this issue isn’t unique to Gen Z. As the article points out, a survey conducted between 1986 and 1996 found that then-18- to 24-year-olds were more likely to visit tanning booths and get sunburns.

And a significant portion of older adults who participated in the two new surveys lacked basic sun safety knowledge, too. For example, 17% of millennials surveyed by the AAD didn’t know tanning caused cancer. But younger adults – “most of whom fell into Gen Z, meaning they were born after 1997,” the Times notes – were more likely to believe sun safety myths.

“Experts said that Gen Z is uniquely susceptible to misinformation about sunscreen and skin cancer that has proliferated on social media platforms like TikTok,” the article says. “They pointed to posts from influencers who claim incorrectly that sunscreen can cause cancer, or from celebrities who claim that they don’t use sunscreen because it interferes with vitamin D absorption.”

Nearly a quarter of the Orlando Health survey respondents under 35 believed that staying hydrated prevents sunburn. (There is no evidence that it does.) And more than a quarter of people ages 18 to 26 polled by the AAD believed getting a base tan would prevent skin cancer – even though a tan, by definition, results from damaged skin cells.

Even more, 28% of the AAD survey’s Gen Z respondents said getting a tan was more important to them than preventing skin cancer, with 70% reporting tanned or darker skin in 2023.

It can be helpful, a dermatologist interviewed by the Times suggests, to approach sun protection like “an investment in your future health.” The more you can protect yourself from the sun’s harmful UV rays while you’re young, the better protected you’ll be against skin cancer, and against the wrinkles and hyperpigmentation that come from sun exposure later in life.