The Common Skinfluencer Mistake You Need To Avoid In Your Own Skincare Routine

From giving you much-needed reviews on what skincare to buy to changing the way you apply your products, skincare and beauty influencers, or skinfluencers, drive a huge part of the beauty market. With the boom of available information on TikTok and Instagram, influencers help us finalize our buying decisions. It's no wonder that beauty brands dedicate part of their budget to PR lists, paid partnerships, and user-generated content. While following beauty influencers and their content can be incredibly helpful in determining what products are worth the hype and what trends need to go, they make mistakes, too, as most of them aren't beauty industry professionals. Yazdani Aesthetics recommends considering the qualifications of the influencer before taking everything they say as truth and even potentially talking to your dermatologist or medical aesthetician before purchasing recommended products.

These skincare mistakes may range from using serums excessively to over-exfoliating, and they can ruin your skincare routine and affect the potency of your products. And while they may seem like practices that don't mean much, there is one that is disastrous to your products, your routine, and your health.

In your serums and moisturizers are nutrients like proteins, vitamins, and lipids — nutrients with which microorganisms thrive. Naturally, on your hands, which are the primary means of applying product onto your face, are germs. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), dipping your hands in your beauty products is listed as one of the key ways microorganisms like E.coli and salmonella get into your skincare. The germs left in your skincare products can multiply and disrupt the preservatives in your formula. Thankfully, there are ways to avoid contaminating your skincare while still getting the most out of your products and one of them is washing your hands.

As Dr. Kucy Pon, a dermatologist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center confirms, these germs are capable of causing skin and eye infections when you apply skincare products containing them onto your skin (via Health Sunnybrook). To prevent contamination and possible infections, wash your hands before applying your skincare. Washing your hands before washing or applying products to your face ensures you're not introducing any germs from your hands to your face (via Foreo).

A great tip after washing your hands is to use applicators like reusable or disposable spatulas to dispense your product. Using a spatula to scoop the product out from the jar or tube and then transferring it to your hands helps ensure that there is little to no contamination (via Bioelements). A quick wash of your applicator and it is ready to be used once again.

Another quick scroll on your beauty feed and you'll certainly find a few skinfluencers applying serums by letting the dropper touch their face. While this method of application may seem aesthetically pleasing and normal, cosmetic chemists and science educators like Dr. Michelle Wong warn that it is far from healthy (via Lab Muffin). On your face are both a healthy microbiome of bacteria and several types of bad germs. Touching your face with the dropper takes some of these bacteria from your face, right into the product. This could lead to infections or ruin the preservative system in your skincare. Instead, let the dropper hover over your skin when applying the product. An alternative is to dispense the product from the dropper onto washed hands and apply it to your skin.

Lastly, the air is one of the ways your products can get contaminated. In the air are microbes that get into your skincare every time you leave your jars and tubes of product open (via Frontiers). Jars allow for large amounts of air and moisture to enter and stay trapped after use and tubes suck back some air whenever the product is dispensed from them. These make products in jars and tubes some of the most challenge-tested products and explain why they contain bacteria-killing preservatives in higher quantities than products in other forms of packaging (via Lab Muffin). Paula's Choice recommends packaging like airless pumps, airless jars, and multi-layer tubes as alternatives to prevent direct contact with products and contamination through the air.

Again, skincare is expensive, both in time and money. The last thing you need is to ruin your products and skin by contaminating them. Following these steps, you'll be well on your way to getting the most out of your products and in turn gain better, healthier skin.