Minors have been banned from indoor tanning in many states and are nearly always required to get parental permission in the others.
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The Executive Director of Melanoma Research Foundation, Tim Turnham, said that it was the fashion and entertainment industries which promoted being tan as fashionable.
For the study, Guy and his colleagues analyzed data for more than 59,000 individuals from the 2010 and 2013 National Health Interview Survey, a nationally representative sample of US adults. Response rates were 60.8% in 2010 and 61.2% in 2013.
During that period, indoor tanning dropped from just over 11 percent to more than 8 percent among 18- to 29-year-olds, the group most likely to visit a tanning salon. He believes that this is what influences people to visit indoor tanning salons.
Among men, however, pollsters saw a 177 percent increase in tanning frequency by 40- to 49-year-olds, and a 71 percent uptick among those aged 50 and older. Furthermore, among women who normally have a fit and healthy lifestyle by exercising regularly, 23% fewer seemed to choose artificial tanning.
From 6 percent, indoor tanning in women dropped to 6.5 percent.
It looks like tanning beds are finally becoming less popular, a new report reveals.
There are a lot of reasons why people choose to go to an indoor tanning bed, and researching those motivations can help put new interventions into place.
Dr. Guy: Indoor tanning exposes users to intense ultraviolet radiation, which damages the skin and can cause skin cancer, including melanoma (the deadliest type of skin cancer), basal cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma.
Trading a tan for an increased risk of skin cancer!
Yet the rates dipped from 5.5 percent in 2010 to 4.2 percent in 2013, the study concluded. About a third of young and adult white women in a study confirmed that they use indoor tanning beds, and many were using them frequently.
This study was published July 1 online in the journal JAMA Dermatology. It has also been suggested that physicians can play a role in helping to reduce indoor tanning through behavioral counseling.
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“The rates of tanning bed use at gyms and private homes are very high – much higher than I expected”, said Dr. Eleni Linos, a public health and dermatology expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
