Taking off on TikTok, mewing is a strategy used by influencers and other celebrities as a quick-fix beauty hack. Mewing,  also known as “orthotropics”, is done by placing the tongue on the roof of the mouth and applying pressure. This causes changes to the jawline, mostly to make the jawbone more defined.

Would you alter your natural appearance to look better very temporarily, even if it was detrimental to your health? Although advertised to help sleep apnea, treat temporomandibular joint dysfunction [TJD], and help with breathing problems, there is no evidence that this “method” works. Overall, mewing can lead to more teeth and jaw health concerns. That saying, it’s not worth the temporary “fix” that it’s advertising to be.

Mewing has several health concerns that teens will overlook, simply to look like their favorite celebrity. Mewing is considered to work best if people start at the age of 15. This is because the jaw is still developing. If people as young as 15 are starting to mew as well at any age, the health issues in the future could be greater and may not be fixable.

Because the majority of modeling agencies teach mewing and other ways to perfect appearances, this can deeply affect the mentality of audiences like teens and young adults. As social media continues to climb in audiences, the videos and pictures online that display mewing can negatively impact the way younger audiences view themselves. Younger people don’t tend to acknowledge the consequences of something before they jump into it, as they are most often never told of the ramifications.

Celebrities can very easily edit images and videos to create images that are false or over-exaggerated for effect. This provides audiences with false information or ideas while trying to make themselves look like the pictures they see.  While audiences are simultaneously not checking to see how the picture was altered, whether it was taken in a controlled environment or naturally. Most audiences won’t know the difference between a raw image and a fake image, unless they are using a side by side comparison.

While mewing does have a lot of health concerns, it is a quick way to define one’s jawline for a quick photo for social media. It makes the person in the photo appear to have naturally defined features that could be the subject of a beauty product’s campaign or a simple hack to use to make a photo slightly better.

At the end of the day, mewing does more harm than good for people. It negatively affects young people as they attempt to change the way they look based on a picture that was likely staged. Mewing creates health issues to the jaw and it isn’t worth changing your appearance just because you saw a celebrity do it once. People, especially young adults need to remember that celebrities often pose staged media for the press, and the same can be said about any individual on the internet.