Now I don't have severe scarring by any means, but I do have what I would consider noticeable shallow scarring (apparently no one else sees it). I'm not posting any links because there are so many articles that state this 95% number of acne patients develop some form of scarring (simple google search confirms this). Do you guys believe it is this high of a percentage? I find it very hard to believe that this many people would have acne scars, but at the same time, I guess we are our own worst critics. I think about my scarring 24/7 and everytime I get a new pimple I panic and pray I don't scar. At almost 25 I have mild to moderate acne (usually no more than a pimple or two at a time), but I panic on a daily basis about my pimples scarring (as I'm sure some of you have noticed during the healing process of a pimple there can be some pitting initially that fills in over a bit of time, but it's terrifying not knowing how badly the scar will turn out).
Are we really our own worst enemies when it comes to this? If 95% of a huge number of people have scarring to a degree, do we really have to frantically worry about our own as if we are so different? Is all the continuous looking into mirrors in different lighting really worth our time? Seems the problem is more common than we think and most people with mild scarring just couldn't care less.
Any studies I've looked at have placed the margin on scarring to be MUCH lower than 95%. I had thought it was something more along the lines of 20% of acne suffers have noticeable scaring. I guess it depends on your definition of scarring, and what you define as someone who has "acne". Temporary redness and hyper-pigmentation is almost universally experienced by people with acne, although it's much more temporary and treatable. If you classified that as a form of scaring, then 95% sounds like a much more reasonable statistic. Also if you classified the people who only get 1 or 2 tiny pimples a month as "having acne" then the margin of 95% cannot be accurate by any means... Plenty of people just get normal teenage acne or milder and you can never tell the after effects of them having it. I don't think you have much to worry about in means of scarring unless you have cystic acne or you pick at your skin a lot. By the sounds of it with your mild-moderate acne its nothing a little bit of treatment in the future couldn't get rid of anyway (:
I have scarring on my forehead that I never even noticed until a few years ago, that was from acne when I was 13 (I'm 26) I think a lot of people have scarring, but just not severe or even noticeable. I hardly even consider what's on my forehead scarring because it doesn't bother me and it's so hard to see unless you get super close up. Sometimes if I pay attention, I'll notice scars on people that I have known forever, that I had never noticed before. Since I started paying attention to other people's skin (when I started feeling down about mine, sigh) I noticed a lot of people do have scars. I have been with my husband for 10 years and just recently noticed, like this year, that he even has a few scars, and I don't think he ever really had bad acne in his life. So I would say that might be true. Most acne sufferers might not get severe scarring, though.