What Gen Z Gets Wrong About Sunscreen

Two new surveys suggest a troubling trend: Young adults seem to be slacking on sun safety, in part because they believe myths about sunscreen and skin cancer risk.

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

In another recent poll, published by 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.

To some extent, experts said, this issue isn’t unique to the current generation of young adults. “There’s a component of young people just being young people,” said Dr. Melissa Shive, a dermatologist at UCI Health in Irvine, Calif. One survey conducted between 1986 and 1996 found that then-18- to 24-year-olds (who are now middle-aged) were more likely than older adults to visit tanning booths and get sunburns.

Young adults are often unaware of what sun damage looks like and how best to prevent it, Dr. Shive said. She said she recently saw a young patient who didn’t know tan skin and freckles were signs of sun damage. Dr. Heather Rogers, a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Washington, said more of her young patients now report visiting tanning beds. Ultraviolet rays — whether from tanning beds or direct sunlight — can damage skin and cause skin cancer, which can be deadly.

Older adults who participated in the recent surveys didn’t have perfect sun safety knowledge, either: 17 percent of millennials surveyed by A.A.D. didn’t know tanning caused skin cancer, for instance. But on the whole, younger adults — most of whom fell into Gen Z, meaning they were born after 1997 — were more likely to report believing sun safety myths.