Our long national sunscreen nightmare is almost over

This is Optimizer , a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here . On TikTok, the tanned youths are explaining why they no longer wear sunscreen. In one video, a young man films himself in the ocean while describing how you can naturally build up a “solar callus” or sun tolerance to getting burned. ( You can’t .) In another, a young woman confidently states that eating healthy foods full of polyphenols and other antioxidants will help make your body more resilient to sunburn. (Antioxidants help with free radical damage, sure, but cannot replace sunscreen .) She also casts sunscreens with “hard-to-pronounce chemicals” as the real enemy, and promotes “all-natural” mineral sunscreens and… beef tallow. (Sadly, yes, the grifters are out here starting to formulate sunscreens with beef tallow despite the horde of dermatologists screaming about how there’s no scientific evidence.) Often, anti-sunscreen influencers argue that our ancestors never worried about sun protection ( they did ) and how could something natural be bad for you? (The natural sun causes sunburns and skin cancer.) Hating sunscreen has strangely caught on, but hopefully, that’s about to change. I’m a different sort of sunscreen evangelist. Last week at WWDC, I found myself chasing down my pastier peers as the sun crept over Apple Park. …