New Study: Nearly 95% of Top Glass Skin TikTok Videos Contain Misleading Claims
If you have scrolled past a glass skin routine on TikTok lately, odds are it was stretching the truth. A study presented at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology Congress in Vienna this fall pulled 38 of the top ranked glass skin and Korean skincare videos on the platform and found that 94.7% of them contained at least one misleading claim. Only one in five creators mentioned anything about skin type, and none recommended seeing a dermatologist.
The research came out of the Professor Rubem David Azulay Institute of Dermatology in Rio de Janeiro, led by resident physician Dr. Maria Lucia Paysano. Her team built a fresh TikTok account with no watch history so the algorithm would not skew results toward content they had already engaged with. From there they pulled the top ten videos for five separate search terms: glass skin, Korean glass skin, Korean skincare, KBeauty skincare and Korean skincare routine. After filtering out duplicates and clips that were not actually about skin, 38 videos made the final sample.
Who Is Actually Making These Videos
The breakdown of who posted this content is probably the most telling part of the study. Non physician influencers made 81.6% of the videos, beauty brands accounted for 10.5%, and other beauty creators made up the remaining 7.9%. Not a single video in the sample came from a dermatologist. That matters because 81.6% of the clips promised the routine shown would deliver glass or glowing skin, and over 42% claimed improved hydration specifically, numbers that sound like outcomes rather than opinions.
The most common issue researchers flagged was routines that ignored skin type entirely, which showed up in 84.2% of videos. Close behind that, 44.7% of the clips stacked an excessive number of active ingredients into a single routine, the kind of ten step layering that looks satisfying on camera but can be rough on a lot of real skin barriers. Another 31.6% promised instant results, and 34.2% specifically claimed the routine would work right away.
Quality Scores Were Low Across the Board
Beyond counting individual claims, the researchers scored each video using two standard tools for judging health information. On the Global Quality Scale, which runs from 1 to 5, the average score came out to 1.13, and nearly 95% of videos landed in the low quality range. On a modified version of the DISCERN tool, used to judge how reliable consumer health content is, the average score was 0.84, and every single video in the sample was rated either unreliable or less reliable. None of the 38 videos cited an outside source or reference for what they claimed.
Safety information was close to nonexistent. Just 2.6% of videos mentioned any risk of irritation, and only 5.3% said anything about sun protection, despite several of the featured routines leaning on exfoliating acids or retinoids that typically call for stronger SPF habits. Not one video brought up contact dermatitis or suggested viewers check in with a dermatologist before trying what was shown.
Basic safety information was consistently missing.
Dr. Paysano put the core problem simply in comments on the findings, adding that skin care is not one size fits all. That is worth sitting with, because the glass skin aesthetic itself is not going anywhere. TikTok Shop's own beauty category has posted close to a billion dollars in quarterly sales this year, with Korean brands driving a big share of that, so the appetite for these routines is real and growing, not a passing moment.
None of this means every glass skin video is useless or that the K-beauty products behind the trend do not work as described on their own packaging. It means the ten second version of a routine that goes viral is built for watch time, not for your specific skin. A video that skips patch testing, ignores sensitivity, and promises an overnight transformation is optimized to get you to finish watching, not to get you results safely.
The practical takeaway is less about avoiding Korean skincare and more about where you get your information on how to use it. Checking a product's actual ingredient list, introducing new actives one at a time instead of all nine at once, and building a routine around your own skin type rather than a stranger's fifteen second clip will do more for you than copying whatever is trending this week. If a video promises instant glass skin and never once mentions your skin type, that absence is the review.