From mewing to bone smashing, experts say a generation of teenage boys is destroying their teeth chasing a TikTok jawline
Young men are risking permanent jaw damage, tooth loss, and lifelong nerve injuries by following looksmaxxing trends they have discovered on TikTok and YouTube, a dentist has warned.
The caution comes as the viral app Omoggle, which pits users against each other in live AI rated face-offs, is facing calls from politicians and child welfare campaigners to be banned, reigniting concern about the pressure young men face over their appearance online. The Centre for Young Lives launched a formal investigation into looksmaxxing’s impact on boys’ health last month.
Dr Bhavika Parekh, General Dental Surgeon at Smile n Shine in Newbury, says the dental consequences of the trend’s most popular techniques such as mewing, hard chewing and bone smashing are being seriously underestimated.
“There is no clinical evidence that any of these techniques change the structure of an adult face,” she says. “But there is very clear evidence that applying sustained, unnatural pressure to the jaw joint causes damage and that damage can be very difficult to reverse.”
The Mewing Problem
Mewing is where you press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth to supposedly reshape the jawline. This trend has amassed billions of views on TikTok alone. AI coaching apps are now selling personalised mewing programmes, complete with exercises named “Hard Mewing” and “Tongue Suction Hold”.
What most users are unaware of is that the British orthodontist the technique is named after, Dr Mike Mew, was erased from the General Dental Council register in November 2024, pending the outcome of an appeal. The GDC ruled that his treatment recommendations were “inappropriate and misleading” and that he posed “a risk to the safety of patients”.
Clinical experts say adult facial bones cannot be reshaped through tongue posture as the skull’s sutures are fully fused in adulthood. What aggressive mewing does cause is temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain, gum recession, bite misalignment, and in some cases loose teeth, as abnormal pressure is applied to structures not designed to bear it.
Bone Smashing: The Extreme End
More alarming still is bone smashing. This is an extreme practice in which young men repeatedly strike their own jaw and cheekbones with hammers or blunt objects in the belief that blunt force trauma will stimulate bone remodelling and create sharper facial features.
Doctors issued specific clinical warnings about the trend early this year. The technique misapplies Wolff’s Law, a biological principle about bone adapting to gradual mechanical load to justify blunt force trauma, which causes fractures rather than remodelling.
Injuries documented include fractured jaws that permanently alter the bite and require surgical correction, knocked out teeth, irreversible TMJ damage, and nerve injuries causing permanent numbness across the lower face and teeth.
“A fractured jaw is a surgical emergency,” says Dr Parekh. “The effects on how your teeth meet and how your jaw functions can last a lifetime. This is not damage you walk off.”
A Trend With No Clinical Basis
Looksmaxxing’s appeal is not difficult to understand. Research published this year has linked the trend to broader incel-adjacent online subcultures that place extreme value on physical appearance, with apps like Omoggle accelerating the pressure young men feel to conform to narrow aesthetic ideals.
But the dental and medical evidence is unambiguous: the techniques being promoted on social media have no clinical basis and documented risks of permanent harm.
For people who want to improve their smile or jaw appearance safely, Dr Parekh points to orthodontic treatment, the only clinically proven method of altering dental alignment and facial symmetry, as well as professional aesthetic dentistry such as teeth whitening and composite bonding.
“The jaw joint is one of the most complex joints in the body,” says Dr Parekh. “Orthodontists spend years learning how to move teeth safely, millimetre by millimetre. The idea that blunt force trauma or tongue posture can do that work is simply not supported by anything we know about how the face develops.”
Anyone experiencing jaw pain, clicking, or bite changes is advised to seek a dental assessment early, as TMJ dysfunction is significantly easier to treat when caught before it becomes chronic.
