It seems like every few months we see a new internet trend taking the world of tweens and teens by storm. Whether kids are biting Tide pods, or participating in dangerous stunts like the Blue Whale Challenge, or the Bucket Challenge, these trends have.a way of being popular enough for kids to participate in them and elusive enough that parents are left in the dark.
Middle school teacher Teresa Newman is revealing one of the latest social media trends this week, and it’s one that has her at her wits end as an educator.
“I think this ‘mewing’ trend with students is probably gonna be the final reason that I decide to never return to the classroom to teach ever again,” she starts a now viral TikTok.
What is the Mewing Trend Among Teens?
The 36-year-old goes on to explain that “mewing” is “basically a gesture that kids are making toward other people that signals to that person that they don’t care what they have to say…”
She continues, “It’s basically just another way to be dismissive of somebody.”
@teresakayenewman What is the “mewing” gesture, why are students mewing their teachers, and why is it harmful and disruptive to the learning environment? #teacher ♬ original sound – Newman Music Academy
Teresa explains that the action of mewing is the motion of someone thrusting their tongue inside of their mouth as a way of strengthening the jaw line.
Developed by a British orthodontist in the 1970’s, mewing is a physical movement of retraining the tongue with the belief that it strengthens the jaw muscles to promote proper oral posture.
According to the American Association of Orthodontists (AAO), mewing claims to be a “do-it-yourself facial restructuring method” in which a person presses their tongue to the roof of the mouth to make their jawline look tighter and slimmer. Mewing isn’t universally recognized in the world of dentistry, and has even been disproven by orthodontic professionals.
Nonetheless, the movement has taken on a life of its own among teens as a slang trend, where teens have added two steps: placing a finger over the lips in a “Shhh” motion, then tracing one side of the jaw from top to bottom.
So teens are essentially responding to teachers with, “I can’t talk now, I’m working on my jawline,” by doing the mewing motion.
