A few years ago, the average first-time dermatology patient in their mid-20s came in about acne. Maybe scarring, maybe some pigmentation from sun damage they'd been ignoring. The visit had a clear trigger—something had gone wrong, and they wanted it fixed. That's changing. Dr. Sonali Kohli, Senior Consultant in Dermatology at Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital, describes a different kind of patient now: younger, concerned not about something that has gone wrong but about something they're trying to get ahead of. Jawline definition at 25. Pore size at 26. The proportions of the face, the fullness of the cheeks, concerns she says used to belong firmly to a patient in their late 30s. "These are things that people usually worry about when they are older."
Shreya*, 27, who works in marketing in Andheri, fits this picture fairly well. She booked her first dermatology appointment not because something had visibly changed but because she'd been on enough Zoom calls to start noticing a line between her brows when she wasn't making any expression at all. "Or maybe it was always there and I'd never stared at my own face this long," she says. She got Botox earlier this year.
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Gen Z is booking dermatology appointments in their mid-to-late 20s, but not for acne, but for jawline definition, pore size, and preventive Botox.
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Hair botox treatments and early hair restoration consultations are part of the same trend, driven largely by screen time and heightened self-scrutiny.
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Doctors are less concerned about the treatments themselves and more focused on why younger patients want them in the first place.
