Can You Give Yourself an At-Home Face-Lift?

Emphatically no, say experts — but there are things you can do to make your skin look better.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever pulled your skin taut across your face after glancing at yourself in a mirror — or worse, in the little Zoom box — just to see what you’d look like. Congratulations: You just got an at-home face-lift. For a few seconds, anyway. According to a report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, people in the United States spent $16.7 billion on cosmetic procedures in 2020, almost $1.9 billion of it on face-lifts. Second only to nose reshaping and eyelid surgery, face-lifts were the third most popular cosmetic surgical procedure, with 234,374 performed in 2020 — a 75-percent increase from 20 years prior. But what if you could skip the cosmetic surgery — which costs, on average, $8,005 — and sculpt your face from the sofa instead? Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram are rife with beauty tutorials offering ways to achieve a more lifted look through facial massage, at-home micro-current devices and even face tape. (Yep, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Tape. On your face.)