Cherri Gervais acquired her first grey hairs as an adolescent.
“It’s genetic,” she mentioned.
Her hair colour, a placing shade of silver, is the very first thing folks on TikTok observed when she requested them to inform her how previous she seemed in a latest video.
The guesses ranged wildly. Many had been appropriate, or shut sufficient, Ms. Gervais mentioned. (She turned 34 this month.) Different instructed she was in her 60s or 70s.
Ms. Gervais, who lives in Kansas and works for a part-time magnificence firm, mentioned she had determined to put up her video after coming upon comparable TikToks.
“I noticed somebody Gen Z do it as a result of they had been saying Gen Z is ageing sooner,” she mentioned, referring to a latest on-line principle arguing that youngsters and younger adults are ageing extra quickly and extra visibly than their millennial counterparts.
Her video is a part of a development through which customers, principally ladies, ask strangers to touch upon their appearances. Ms. Gervais mentioned that lots of the feedback she had acquired had been unkind.
“Folks advised me to dye my hair, advised me to get lashes, to repair my eyebrows,” she mentioned. A number of instructed that she seemed like a “middle-aged mother.” “There’s nothing improper with that,” Ms. Gervais added. “However I’m not a mother.”
Jalisa Silva-Toney, a 21-year-old social work scholar who lives in Level Nice, W.Va., additionally took half. “I used to be simply curious,” she mentioned, noting that folks typically get her age improper.
A part of the explanation she wished to put up her video, she mentioned, was that she hadn’t seen many different Black ladies taking part. She added that TikTok’s tradition of fixed comparability may very well be fueling the development and the bigger debate over her era’s frown strains and pores and skin elasticity.
Pri Maha, a enterprise analyst in Atlanta, mentioned she had requested folks to guess her age in a latest TikTok video principally out of curiosity.
“I do see content material from big-time influencers who’re solely, like, 23, getting Botox,” Ms. Maha, 27, mentioned. “Typically it does make me assume, ‘Oh, ought to I be doing that, since I’m older?’”
She added, “I really feel like there may be positively a push the place I see youthful women getting work accomplished, or simply attempting to look as younger as attainable, when they’re nonetheless tremendous younger.”
Not everybody was in it only for curiosity’s sake, although.
“I’ve fairly thick pores and skin, and never quite a lot of issues harm my emotions,” mentioned Morgan Driscoll, who works in communications at a tech firm and lives in Weymouth, Mass. “I knew it was price posting for the views.”
As a result of she is somebody who aspires to have a lot of TikTok followers, Ms. Driscoll, 30, noticed taking part within the development as a form of enterprise alternative.
“I didn’t put up it as a result of I used to be on the lookout for validation,” she mentioned. “I posted it as a result of I knew it will get engagement.”
She was proper: Her video has been seen over 100,000 occasions.
A lot of the feedback had been about her eyebrows. “I’ve very millennial eyebrows,” Ms. Driscoll mentioned, which means her eyebrows are skinny. She was going to get them “fastened” this week, she added, primarily based on the TikTok suggestions.
“I feel the worst I acquired was a remark saying that my neck is getting a gobbler, which is loopy,” she added. “I imply, I simply turned 30!”
However for a lot of TikTokers, any engagement is sweet engagement.
“A remark is a remark,” Ms. Driscoll mentioned. “I don’t care if they’re trolls. I don’t care in the event that they inform me I appear like a toad. I simply need the feedback.”