A broad spectrum of “sunscreen truthers” on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook have peddled the trope that sunscreen causes cancer for at least the last decade. These types of conspiracy theories have reached a fever pitch on social media since the pandemic. From vegan anti-vaxxers and bro-biohackers to MAHA and QAnon supporters, they all have two things in common: a case of chemophobia and a belief that sunscreen is the enemy.
But digging beneath the underbelly of mainstream social media on extremist platforms infamous for minimal guardrails like Trump’s Truth Social (known for amplifying conspiracy theories) and 4Chan (notorious for being a breeding ground for hate and violence), the far right converges with the far left in a diagonalist (sharing the conviction that all power is conspiracy) intersection of sinister anti-sunscreen conspiracy theories.
One in seven young adults (under 35) believe sunscreen is more harmful than the sun, according to a 2024 Orlando Health Cancer Institute survey. And studies show that the rise in skin cancer diagnoses in the past 30 years can largely be attributed to increased sun exposure, excessive sunbathing, and indoor tanning.
Conspiracy theories, like the anti-sunscreen movement, “often originate on extremist social media platforms because they go completely under the radar in terms of law and policy discussions,” explained Dr. Neil Johnson, Professor of Physics at George Washington University and Head of the Dynamic Online Networks Lab. Johnson and his team study how misinformation, extremist, and hate content proliferates on social media.
“Yet you are looking at a total of 50 million or more people in this picture [extremist social media]—and they are directly connected to the rest of us (5 billion globally) who are in mainstream communities in the well-known large platforms.”
Think of TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram as the outer layer of anti-sunscreen conspiracies where wellness influencers and “clean” beauty brands spread fear-inducing sunscreen misinformation. The next layer is X, where mainstream sunscreen misinformation is commingled with QAnon and extremist anti-sunscreen posts.
The rhetoric gets darker and more ominous as you get closer to the core. From blaming the government and Big Pharma to Jewish people, the inner core comprises extremist platforms like Truth Social and 4Chan, a pernicious nucleus constructed of fear and hate.
Unexpected Poster Girl
Spring and early summer are high season for sunscreen conspiracy theories on both mainstream and extremist social media. Many of the posts are from MAGA and bro-biohackers sharing their cherry-picked science, collaging it together with accompanying propaganda into a common conspiracy that sunscreen—not the sun—gives you cancer.
One of the most viral anti-sunscreen posts is from MatrixMysteries, an Illuminati believer spreading far-right QAnon-esque conspiracies like Pizzagate, New World Order, and Big Pharma. The post, “Sunlight Causes Cancer—A Fear-Driven Lie,” originated on X and has been viewed over 1.4 million times (as of press time), reposted on X 1.7K times (as of press time), and also to extremist platforms like Truth Social.
When you click on the original post, you see four images. Three out of four are typical of anti-sunscreen content—a chart attempting to show that sunscreen causes cancer, a photo of frolicking tanned surfers from the 1960s, and an interview with Joseph Mercola, known for being the “most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online,” according to The New York Times.
The fourth image, intermingled with the propaganda, shows the smiling face of luxury skincare brand founder Dr. Barbara Sturm. Click on Dr. Sturm’s face, and you see her interviewed by bro-biohacker podcaster Gary Brecka, a self-proclaimed human biologist, biohacker, and longevity expert (note: he is not a licensed medical doctor or PhD).
Followed by mostly MAHA and biohackers, Brecka leaves a trail of medical misinformation in his wake. When Brecka recently appeared on The Joe Rogan Show, after praising “Bobby” Kennedy and his MAHA movement, Brecka demonized seed oils and described the FDA’s GRASE (Generally Recognized as Safe and Effective) designation as a way the FDA can decipher whether a company has permission to “micropoison the population.”
In the full interview between Brecka and Dr. Sturm, who sold her namesake brand to Puig in 2014 for an undisclosed amount, Brecka asks the skincare founder about the “pandemic of sunscreens” in the US. Dr. Sturm appears to deflect by saying that constantly damaging your skin with actives like retinol and glycolic acid makes your skin more vulnerable to the sun. True.
Then, Dr. Sturm, who sells a $160 sunscreen in her skincare line, infers that if you make your skin stronger with things like exosomes (the brand sells an exosome serum and eye cream) and generally take care of your skin, you won’t need sunscreen.
Brecka then mentions the often-debunked anti-sunscreen conspiracy theory that the proliferation of sunscreen correlates with the rise in skin cancer cases. Dr. Sturm doesn’t take the bait and tries to steer the conversation away, so Brecka directly asks her, “But why do you think that there would be a correlation to the increase in the availability and use of sunscreens at the same time that you have a rise in skin cancers?”
Dr. Strurm responds, “I read that, and probably because, you know, as we already said, these chemicals are not amazing, these are not great skincare ingredients.” She goes on to plug her supplements for “internal sun protection.”
The interview mirrors many “clean” beauty founder interviews, where the founders underline which ingredients are not in their products rather than what is, served up with a big scoop of fear. The difference is that this “clean” beauty founder was interviewed by a podcaster who said on the Joe Rogan podcast that he advises RFK, Jr. on his MAHA agenda.
This interview is being circulated in the dark corners of the internet as part of a conspiracy theory thread called “A Thread Exposing the Everyday Lies and Propaganda We’ve Been Sold.” Other “conspiracies” highlighted in this thread include feminism, blaming Big Pharma for creating diseases, and the “climate change hoax.”
So, how did a celebrity-loved brand founder become the poster child for far-right extremists’ anti-sunscreen content? Words matter. Who brand founders align themselves with matters. In the age of Trump and RFK Jr., “clean beauty” rhetoric can become a gateway to more nefarious conspiracy theories.
Dr. Sturm declined to comment for this story.
“When we’re talking about the ‘clean’ beauty industry, fearmongering has become a very effective marketing strategy, especially when it’s aimed towards a common goal,” said best-selling author Timothy Caulfield, Professor, Faculty of Law and School of Public Health; Research Director, Health Law Institute, University of Alberta, Canada. “There are a couple of things happening, and all of these things have accelerated post-pandemic. One is this erosion of trust. ‘You can’t trust the regulators, they’re evil. But you can trust us.’ It plays into their marketing strategy. The other thing that’s happening is what’s called the motte-and-bailey fallacy.”
Professor Caulfield told BeautyMatter that this fallacy plays into the “clean” beauty narrative. “They [“clean” brands] make a broad claim everyone agrees with, like, ‘we all want safe products.’ Then the brands share their research and products. Then, if you challenge what the brands say because there is no evidence backing up their messaging, they [‘clean’ brand founders] retreat to the conclusion that if you disagree with them or critique them, then you are the enemy. It’s a very effective strategy because it’s distracting. It makes the person critiquing the pseudoscience ‘pro-toxins.’”
Red Pill, Black Pill
Meanwhile, on 4Chan, users are giving out antisemitic red pills like candy. One common anti-sunscreen conspiracy on 4Chan is that sunscreen is a “Jewish lie” or a “Jewish trick.”
Researcher Beth Daviess wrote “Sunscreen Skepticism: An Examination of Sunscreen and Sun Exposure Conspiracy Theories” while working for the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (M.I.I.S.) at Monterey. In her paper, Daviess cited that some wellness influencers follow Germanic New Medicine, which is rooted in antisemitism.
Ryke Geerd Hamer (the founder of the movement) proposed Germanic New Medicine as an alternative to mainstream clinical medicine, which he viewed as a part of a Jewish conspiracy to eliminate non-Jews, Daviess wrote. Some sunscreen “truthers” believe sunscreen is one of many tools that a vindictive Jewish medical industry uses to undermine whiteness.
Daviess, who is now a Research Fellow at the Accelerationism Research Consortium at M.I.I.S., chose to research the spread of sunscreen conspiracy theories because it’s a good example of how wellness conspiracy theories can operate, “moving from the outer layer of increasingly conspiratorial thinking and ending up in a place where it becomes sort of the classic conspiratorial narrative that a highly malevolent force controls a massive amount of our societal structure.” Daviess told BeautyMatter, “It’s a consistent theme across many conspiracy theories; wellness-related conspiracy theories are no exception.”
Daviess clarified that this is not to say anyone who is anti-sunscreen will inevitably become an antisemitic extremist. “Antisemitism [in this context] can come from two related places. There are these wellness and ‘traditional’ health systems that have roots in antisemitic belief systems [like Germanic New Medicine], so there is an explicit connection there. Still, there’s also just the typical path that conspiracy theory thinking often leads to antisemitism.”
Daviess cited journalist Mike Rothschild’s writing. “This is a deeply ingrained historical narrative in our society—the belief that a super-powerful force controls us,” explained Daviess. “It leads people down the conspiratorial rabbit hole, inevitably pointing to Jewish people as the controlling force.”
Lookmax.org, a community board for men looking to improve their appearance, is a magnet for angry incels spewing Jewish hate-filled black pills. Users on the platform, which averages around 3 million monthly views, blame Jews for sunscreen labels recommending reapplying sunscreen every two hours.
One user said sunscreen is “a Jewish lie to get you to run through more product,” while another user said that “rubbing Jewish chemicals like sunscreen will only make it [your skin] worse.” An angry incel teen complained that when his family goes on vacation, they “force me to put on Jew testosterone killing sunscreen because they think that the sun is unhealthy.”
Another common incel belief is that sunscreen makes men less masculine and decreases their chances of attracting a woman. On Incels.is, a popular incel message board, one user said, “Healthy active men do not waste their time with sunscreen. Avoiding the sun and wearing sunscreen is the quickest path to solidify your inceldom. These two are the final death sentence.”
In his 2024 documentary Harder Better Faster Stronger, Professor Caulfield investigated the manosphere, debunking masculine toxicity misinformation and conspiracy theories. In his research, Professor Caulfield uncovered the popular trope that real men don’t wear sunscreen. "Research has found that – likely increasingly – the use of sunscreen is viewed as a feminine activity, which is obviously ridiculous,” Professor Caulfield told BeautyMatter. “No amount of manly man vibes can protect you against skin cancer."
The Sisyphean Scientist
Dr. Michelle Wong is exhausted. The Australia-based chemist, science educator, and author who runs Lab Muffin Beauty Science, a blog and collection of social media accounts, spends over 700 hours every year making YouTube and social media content debunking anti-sunscreen conspiracy theories and disproving baseless claims.
Because Dr. Wong lives in Australia, debunking sunscreen misinformation has become a full-time job. And while most of her followers are savvy by now on sunscreen safety, every time a new fearmongering sunscreen headline comes out, Dr. Wong goes into triage, fielding panicked DMs and comments and correcting the terrifying posts on TikTok and Instagram.
Over the years, Dr. Wong has received accusations of being a “Big Pharma shill” for her sunscreen support and is constantly correcting “sunscreen truthers” across all of the mainstream social media channels. She responds patiently to commenters who claim to know more than her and those suggesting a DIY sunscreen would be more effective than store-bought sunscreen.
None of the discourse bothers Dr. Wong, and she accepts her fate of rolling her boulder up the mountain of sunscreen misinformation every year, only to have a scare headline send the boulder back down.
What concerns Dr. Wong is the parents who agree with the sunscreen misinformation and conspiracy theories, and then refuse to use sunscreen on their kids. “A lot of people do this. They talk about how they’re scared to put sunscreen on their kids, and it really worries me because there is a lot of data showing that sunburns before age 18 are particularly dangerous,” Dr. Wong told BeautyMatter. “It's likely because when you're younger, your stem cells aren't entirely developed yet, and so if you have changes to them when they [stem cells] are young and immature, it greatly increases your chance of melanoma.”
In a cohort study in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, researchers found that teens who have at least five blistering sunburns between the ages of 15 and 20 had an 80% increased risk of melanoma and a 68% increased risk for basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.
“I think one of the most important things to remember is that all of this noise has real consequences,” Professor Caulfield said. “It causes us to concentrate on the wrong thing by creating these binary positions. You can’t have any nuance in this information ecosystem.”
Dr. Wong’s educational background is evident in her patience when responding to misinformation in the comments on her sunscreen posts on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram—like when a commenter questioned Dr. Wong’s knowledge of a sun filter on a recent sunscreen post on Instagram. The commenter in question, who seemed to be in the “I do my own research” camp, ended her comment with, “Our skin is the largest organ of your body, why douse it in chemicals? When did humanity go from worshiping the sun to demonizing it?”
Instead of blowing up at the commenter (though many of her followers took the liberty), Dr. Wong calmly summarized the facts, gave pertinent statistics, and pushed the boulder back up the mountain, temporarily dispelling the fear—until another fearmongering headline, post, or comment pushes the boulder back down the mountain.
