DIY braces ‘scary’ trend for tweens and teens
Orthodontists in B.C. are aghast at a social media trend that is gaining popularity with tweens and teens: do-it-yourself braces.
The idea isn’t brand new, but an increasing number of images and online videos can be found on sites like Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube promoting the idea.
They mostly feature young girls sitting at kitchen tables, in their bedrooms or bathrooms, demonstrating how to loop together homemade teeth-straightening gadgets and then lasso them around incisors and canines.
The materials are simple: Tiny, often colourful, rubber bands as well as folded bits of aluminum foil, paper clips, fishing line, and pierced earring backs.
But the practice of wearing these contraptions to, say, close a gap between two front teeth or just to see what you might look like with real braces is worrying the professionals.
“For us, it’s very, very scary,” Colleen Adams, a Vancouver orthodontist said. “Teeth actually move quite readily. That’s the problem. You have to move them with force systems designed to move them the way you want.”
Adams hasn’t seen a case in her own practice, but the proliferation of online videos concerns her. Recently, the American Association of Orthodontists reported that nearly 13 per cent of members are seeing patients who have tried these DIY teeth-straightening gadgets as well as other methods such as biting on pencils, making fake retainers and pushing teeth with fingers. People ranging in ages from eight to over 60 are attempting to straighten their own teeth, according to the AAO report.
“The cost and pain associated with attempting to straighten your own teeth without the proper training, material and tools can be extensive,” said Todd Moore, president of the B.C. Society of Orthodontists, in a statement. “Not only can DIY treatment cost time and money down the road, but patients could potentially be causing irreparable damage that will affect teeth and mouth for years to come. A patient wouldn’t attempt to set a broken bone on their own, so they shouldn’t attempt to fix structural issues either.”
Other complications can include infection from elastics that get stuck in gum lines or root tips of teeth bones, said Adams.
In one video, a young girl warns viewers of more basic hazards like choking. Mouth wide open and head tilted back so she can shimmy out earring backs she threaded onto a tiny elastic, she says: “You wouldn’t want (them) to fling back into your throat ...”
If there is anyone to blame for the wacky trend, it might be Amos Dudley, a 23-year-old New Jersey Institute of Technology student and self-described “3-D modeller, level designer, maker.”
In March 2016, CNN Money and the Washington Post wrote about Dudley’s project using a 3-D printer to make a clear, plastic aligner for $60. After fixing his own teeth and writing online about it, strangers started asking him to straighten their teeth. The whole thing sparked a mini-brouhaha about the high cost of orthodontic work.
But access to orthodontic care doesn’t seem to be driving the current uptick in interest as much as social video content descended from the original YouTube tutorial.
Adams said for young teens, getting braces has become part of a “standardized ... rite of passage. It’s something you do as you get older,” whereas, in the past, it carried more stigma or awkwardness.
“There are a lot more pictures (of perfectly straight teeth) these days. People in North America are much more aware, generally, of how teeth should sit in your smile and how they should sit together.”