Yes skin type does play a big part Bonnie but all are at risk to some degree.
Skin cancer is rife in OZ for obvious reason. We've had a campaign running since the 80s called Slip Slop Slap, originally aimed at kids but applying to all. It's Slip on a shirt. Slop on some sun-screen. Slap on a hat.
It has had a fair bit of success in reducing common garden variety sun cancers but melanomas proved to be an anomaly in the stats. The rate wavered but overall rose, while other types fell.
It's been theorized, not proven to my knowledge but seems sensible enough to be right, that propensity to develop melanoma later in life depends on the amount of sun exposure a person had as a child to teenager. Kids who spent their days at the beach, or got suburnt often are statistically more likely to develop the more dangerous forms of skin cancers in middle to later life.
That accounts for the rise of melanoma cases as the baby boomers aged. We seemed to be the first generation to be addicted to suntans etc. Our parents and previous generations didn't do the 'beach lifestyle' thing did they? They wore hats, always. It was the norm and the fashion. That fashion died out and the bare headed, bare as much as legal body, oiled and tanned look became the fad. We are paying for that now. Those former bleached blonde surfies of the 60s are easy to spot now, they're the ones with the scars of removed sun cancers.
Kids on beaches these days wear special sunproof material shirts, floppy hats with flaps that hang down the back of their necks and have their exposed bits covered in sun-screen of all colours. They look total fashion victims but they stand a better chance in later life of lessening the melanoma risk.
As with all things it's not a 100% sure thing, many quite young people, in their 20s, contract melanomas despite the Sunsmart campaign. It does seem to be more likely to be lethal in younger people than older ones unless caught very early for some reason.
Those tanning machines that look like coffins with lights in them that people lay down in to get a 'salon tan' have been, or are being banned here. The incidence of fatal melanoma in younger people has been traced to them in many cases.
But, as life tends to go, there's no free lunch. It's now a worry that kids aren't getting enough sunlight leading to poor bone development and osteoporosis risk in later life. Like me. siiiigh. I have that pale freckly 'Celtic' type skin that sunburns in 10 minutes and blisters in 20 so I had to stay covered up as a kid and the beach was only done at holiday time. I got sunburned every damned year just the same but only for a week or so a year. Now a low vitamin D count, plus genetic factors have led to osteoporosis problems.
Finding a balance of enough sun exposure for bones, but not enough for melanoma in every individual child is impossible for researchers to nail. It's a lucky dip. But life's like that.
