Every marketer knows that teens make up the fastest-growing group of cellphone users and Net surfers, but it’s more than a little surprising that this 12- to 17-year-old group is now honing an area once exlusively reserved for their older siblings and parents: esthetic services.

Shocking enough that this wrinkle-free generation is interested in spending its free time receiving beauty treatments, but it gets even stranger: Botox injections are one of the key treatments our teens are choosing.

Over half a million (550,000) Canadians had Botox injections in the past year. Fifteen per cent of these people were aged 12 to 17, making this one of the larger age groups having the procedure.

The fact that 12- to 17-year-olds make up 9% of the population but 15% of those having Botox injections make this age group one-and-a-half times more likely than the average Canadian to have had the procedure; no other age group shows as much affinity for Botox.

While the RTS survey does not ask the reasons why a respondent had Botox injections, Botox can be effective against acne and excessive sweating – not just wrinkles – which may explain the relatively high proportion of teens having had the treatment.