Attempting to step away from your devices as part of a digital detox? Our beauty director found her beauty routine was getting in the way.
I wake up in the morning and my phone has already pinged multiple times, and it’s not got anything to do with a ‘good morning’ message from friends or family. Instead, I’ve received a full report of data from my smart devices about how I slept, accompanied with reminders about the best approaches for my skincare routine and even self-care suggestions to ‘start my day right’.
As I reach for my phone, I only briefly remember that I’d promised to start a digital detox that day.
Here’s the thing. Once upon a time, beauty was a purely offline experience. It was about texture and touch and aromas. For many of us, it helped disconnect us from the world around, acting as a key moment to unwind as you applied or took off your makeup.
But the digitalisation of the world – our beauty routines included – has caused a society-wide shift that shows no sign of slowing down. With ever-evolving smartphones, apps and a whole array of the latest beauty tech and devices, it’s true that new advancements are helping us build more personalised beauty practices.
Yet, with an epidemic of digital addiction and ‘doomscrolling’ on social media (in the UK, recent research has found that we spend, on average, 28% of our day on our phones, and nearly half of UK teens feel addicted to social media), it’s no surprise that so many mental health professionals advocate for less time on our devices and more time doing, well, anything else.
But is that even possible while our beauty routines are going in the opposite direction?
How beauty got techy
You only have to look at some of the industry’s biggest hitters to see how massive an impact digitalisation is having on beauty innovation. There’s now always ‘an app for that’.
It’s a simple process too. Get a link to download the application. Sync it to your beauty device. Enable push notifications. And just like that, your beauty routine is now a daily data feedback loop.
There’s an app to check you’ve brushed every inch of your mouth, courtesy of Oral B. Your at-home beauty treatments deliver expert insights straight to your phone, courtesy of Philips’ Lumea app for at-home hair removal. Foreo’s facial massage and cleansing platform tracks and guides your skincare routine. Dyson is no longer just the brand that ‘reinvented’ the hairdryer with the iconic Supersonic in 2016 either; it’s powered the rise of the ‘smart hairdryer’, where tools don’t just dry your hair, they give you real-time feedback too. The MyDyson app delivers how-to tutorials, but also controls the wrapping, curling and cooling processes of your device, so you can style your hair while hardly lifting a finger.
The health and wellbeing industry has become metric-centric in rapid time. From fitness watches on our wrists to rings on our fingers, every second of our lives can now be tracked, with insights into how we workout and recover 24/7. The Oura Ring has been praised for helping users identify illnesses like COVID early due to subtle temperature fluctuations, and the Sleep8, a smart mattress, is transforming your sleep by customising the temperature of your mattress, waking you up gently with vibrations, and providing realtime updates on sleep quality. Wellness experts say such analytics are changing the wellbeing game.
The beauty catch-22
Let’s be clear: beauty apps and technology aren’t inherently bad. In fact, the above innovations show that they can actually be really exciting. They are also potentially empowering. Skincare tracking apps, such as those offered by La Roche Posay for breakouts, and Noli’s personalised product recommendation platform – both of which rely mainly on a simple selfie – can boost confidence and your skincare results in equal measure, while AI-driven shade matching services have already made makeup more inclusive. Being a little more sustainable and beauty educated within our routines has also been simplified: just check for a QR code on your favourite products and you’ll be directed to more information on the sourcing, ingredients and how-to instructions that couldn’t possibly fit on the packaging alone.
Even mirrors aren’t sacred anymore. Now, there’s ‘smart mirrors’ that have built in skin analysis and exercise tools, like the Magic AI Fitness Smart Mirror, which can offer rep counting and form correction. And when was the last time you carried a compact mirror with you in your bag? Most of us now use our phones as mirrors on the go – another understated tech-infusion into our day-to-day regimes.
But here’s the irony: our ‘smart’ beauty and fitness routines threaten to make us all so plugged in, so app-dependent, that our regimes are just another excuse to stare at – and stay addicted to – our devices. No wonder we feel exhausted by our screen time. We are simultaneously craving a break from our phone and designing lives that depend on tech like never before.
Our devices arguably know it too. There’s a reason so many beauty apps use dopamine-triggering sounds, push notifications, and streaks for skincare consistency to keep us coming back. It’s wellness gamified. But, are we really winning that game, when we can’t ever disconnect? What was once a personal ritual has become another task to complete amongst a busy schedule. And, perhaps most worryingly, it is starting to feel a lot like digital validation disguised as diagnostics.
It’s no longer enough to feel good, it seems – we need the data to prove and monitor it. For all the meditation apps and skincare supporters we download, we still carry our phones from bed to office and back again, chasing calm through screen time and threatening to overwhelm ourselves with so much beauty information we actually feel even more confused. When our beauty routines involve daily reports, biometric data, and constantly glowing screens – plus all the products we’re already using – we are at risk of self-care becoming self-surveillance.
So where do we go from here?
If you love your techy beauty tools, don’t worry – we aren’t advocating that you throw out every smart device you own. But it probably is time to set some boundaries. Maybe it’s deciding that your morning skincare stays offline, switching off your phone notifications during your nighttime wind-down, and using your techy tools in manual mode once in a while. Even swapping your phone for an old-fashioned hourglass to time your wellness practices is a simple commitment to slowing down.
A small step I’m taking is trying to go digital-beauty free at the weekends. My tech is still on hand to simplify my working week routine (and help me feel put together), but Saturday and Sunday are much more devoted to ‘me-time’ slowdowns. And, guess what: ‘missing two days’ of the tech-based schedule hasn’t destroyed my beauty and wellness progress, it’s left me feeling much more in control.
For me, it’s about rediscovering the freedom to enjoy a beauty routine without needing an app to tell you how it went. With every new beauty tech investment, just ask yourself, is it going to serve your routine or just serve you more data? If it’s the latter, it’s time to break up with that toxic relationship once and for all…
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