Kerry Katona found herself facing an unexpectedly tough question on Good Morning Britain after Susanna Reid challenged her over allowing her youngest daughter to access social media from such a young age.

The mother-of-five appeared on the programme alongside her 19-year-old daughter Heidi to discuss growing concerns about the influence beauty and skincare content can have on children.

But the conversation quickly became more personal when Kerry revealed that her youngest daughter, Dylan-Jorge — known as DJ — had become fascinated by online skincare videos and wanted to buy products intended for much older skin.

DJ is now 12, but her interest in social media reportedly began when she was around eight.

That detail prompted Susanna to ask the question that suddenly changed the tone of the interview.

“I’m gonna say something a bit spiky here, Kerry. Why is an eight-year-old on social media?”

It was a direct question — and one that opened up a much wider debate about parenting in the age of TikTok-style beauty trends, influencers and increasingly sophisticated online content aimed at young audiences.

“It was getting out of hand”

According to Heidi, she first became concerned after noticing how much beauty-related content her younger sister was consuming online.

DJ had reportedly been watching “Get Ready With Me” videos and content promoting trends such as achieving flawless “glass skin.”

For an adult viewer, these videos might seem like harmless beauty entertainment.

But Heidi feared that for a young child repeatedly exposed to idealised complexions, expensive products and elaborate skincare routines, the message could become much more powerful.

“I think she was seeing a lot of Get Ready With Me, the trend of having glass skin,” Heidi explained.

She said her younger sister simply wanted to copy what she was seeing around her and what other children appeared to be doing.

“I understand, it’s all she’s seeing, so she just wants to be like her friends. I think she’s just copying what she sees.”

Kerry admitted she had been stunned when she began noticing just how young some children buying skincare products appeared to be.

During a visit to Boots, she said she saw groups of children around eight years old looking at various beauty products.

“I was like, ‘I don’t understand why you need all this skincare,’” Kerry recalled.

Heidi’s response was blunt.

She told her mother she had already warned her repeatedly that the trend was becoming “out of hand.”

Susanna asks the uncomfortable question

It was at this point that Susanna challenged Kerry directly.

Why, she asked, was an eight-year-old using social media in the first place?

Heidi quickly defended her mother, explaining that Kerry had actually been strict about social media when she herself was younger and had not allowed her to use it until she was 13.

But Kerry acknowledged how difficult the issue had become as technology and childhood habits changed from one generation to the next.

With five children spanning different age groups, Kerry said she had witnessed those changes firsthand.

Her eldest daughter Molly is now in her twenties, and Kerry recalled that she was around nine when she received her first iPad.

“What I have noticed with all of my children is how the generations have changed,” Kerry explained.

She argued that children today are exposed to trends, technology and social pressures much earlier than previous generations.

And despite trying to limit DJ’s exposure, Kerry admitted that resisting what seemingly “everybody else” was doing could be difficult.

“As much as I try to keep her off it, everybody else is doing it,” she said. “It’s hard.”

Susanna clarified that she was not trying to criticise Kerry personally.

Kerry then broke the tension in typically irreverent fashion, joking that her alternatives were limited before quipping about giving her daughter a tablet or iPad.

The humour drew attention away from what had briefly become an uncomfortable exchange, but the issue behind the conversation remained serious.

“Adult beauty standards” reaching children

Heidi offered perhaps the strongest warning of the interview.

As an influencer herself, she understands how powerful online content can be — but she believes children are increasingly being exposed to expectations that were once largely reserved for adults.

She warned that “adult beauty standards” were effectively being pushed onto children through social media.

Her concerns reflect a growing debate around so-called “Sephora kids” and similar trends, where increasingly young consumers become interested in elaborate skincare routines, anti-ageing ingredients and expensive beauty products after seeing them promoted online.

While basic skincare can be perfectly appropriate for children and teenagers, many products marketed toward adults contain active ingredients that younger skin may not need.

For Heidi, the problem goes beyond skincare itself.

It is about what children may begin believing they need to look like.

When a child repeatedly watches perfectly lit videos featuring flawless skin, carefully curated routines and shelves filled with expensive products, beauty can begin to feel less like fun and more like an expectation.

Heidi backed stronger restrictions around children’s access to social media, as well as clearer age guidance for certain skincare products.

Kerry’s parenting dilemma resonates with a bigger debate

Kerry’s response also highlighted a problem familiar to many parents: even when they try to set boundaries, children are growing up in a world where social media is deeply embedded in friendships, school life and popular culture.

Telling one child they cannot use a platform becomes more complicated when many of their classmates appear to be using it already.

That does not necessarily settle the question of whether children should have access — but it helps explain why the issue has become such a difficult battleground for families.

Kerry’s family offers an unusual example of just how quickly childhood has changed.

She has raised five children across different eras of technology, from a time when tablets were relatively new to a generation now surrounded by influencers, viral trends and algorithm-driven content.

What might once have been a child asking for a lip gloss or copying a hairstyle from a magazine can now become an entire multi-step beauty routine learned from hours of online videos.

And that is exactly what appeared to concern Heidi.

A conversation bigger than one family

The timing of the debate is particularly significant amid growing political discussion over tighter restrictions on young people’s use of social media.

Proposals for stronger age protections have intensified questions about how much responsibility should fall on parents, technology companies and governments.

Susanna’s question to Kerry — “Why is an eight-year-old on social media?” — may have sounded confrontational.

But it also captured the heart of a much larger argument.

Should parents simply ban access?

Should social media companies do more to keep young children away?

Or has online culture become so deeply woven into childhood that families are being left to fight an almost impossible battle alone?

Kerry did not pretend to have a perfect answer.

Instead, she admitted something many parents may recognise: she tried to keep her daughter away from certain influences, but found it increasingly difficult when those same influences seemed to surround her everywhere.

For Kerry, the discussion may have begun with skincare.

But by the end of the interview, it had become about something far bigger — how parents protect children growing up in a digital world where adult beauty standards, trends and pressures can reach them before they are old enough to fully understand what they are seeing.

And perhaps the most unsettling part of the conversation was Heidi’s simple explanation for why DJ wanted those products in the first place.

She was copying what she saw.

Because when you are only eight, you may not understand algorithms, advertising or unrealistic beauty standards.

You simply see everyone else doing something — and wonder why you shouldn’t be doing it too.