Will putting a snail on your face make you beautiful?

... or shaving off your brows, drawing DIY freckles or using glue to remove blackheads? We ask several beauty experts to dissect the latest TikTok skincare trends

DOWNLOADED over 4 billion times and expected to reach 1.8 billion users by the end of the year, TikTok is largely where Gen Z consume content.

Beauty and image content is particularly popular, with hashtags like #glowups, #acne and #hairtransformation currently trending. However, the quality of advice varies dramatically.

While there are professional beauticians and aestheticians on the platform there are also amateur ‘skinfluencers’ without qualifications. Once a product or advice goes viral on TikTok, the momentum it gains is incredible.

The recent furore around teenagers using skincare suitable for adults like retinols and exfoliating acids revealed the reach and influence of the platform.

The latest viral TikTok craze is Lemon Bottle, a jab from South Korea that claims to dissolve fat. Like many products on social media, it is marketed as a risk-free quick fix but there is no clinical evidence to back it up. Instead, a slick video, viewed over 81 million times, shows the product dissolving fat when injected into a rasher. Sensationalism rather than science is the selling point.

Liz Dwyer, former beauty journalist and founder of the Future Beauty and Health Show bemoans the lack of regulation on social media and says it is ‘sad for young people who are so vulnerable’.

‘It annoys me that people are a) easily influenced and b) how no one questions their authority,’ she says. ‘I think all these trends are absolutely insane.’

Here we examine some viral TikTok beauty trends and ask a range of experts for their professional insights.