There's often a debate about how long babies and toddlers should use pacifiers, but a new age group has entered the chat: full-blown adults. Adults are using pacifiers for various mental health reasons. It seemed to start going viral in China, but it's spread, with adults in the United States sharing their videos on TikTok. There's a serious market too, with some online shops saying they sell more than 2000 items a month. But medical professionals are warning against the viral trend.
What is the adult pacifier trend?
Chinese social media platforms like Rednote have videos of adults using their pacifiers. They are bigger versions of the ones babies used, are blinged out, assorted colors, and are reportedly sold for anywhere between $14 to $70, per The Cover. Adults in the United States have jumped on the trend too, sharing videos on TikTok.
Why are people using them?
Adults are claiming it's helping them provide psychological comfort, sleep, quit smoking, reduce stress, and even help with breathing. Buyers have been sharing their stories, claiming it gives them a sense of safety from childhood and helps when they are feeling pressured at work.
People are also claiming it's helping them work when they have ADHD.
What doctors are saying
While people are claiming the adult pacifiers are having a positive impact, dentists and psychologists are warning against them. “The potential damage to customers’ mouths by the pacifiers is intentionally played down by their sellers,” Tang Caomin, a dentist in Chengdu, Sichuan, said, per SCMP.
They warn that using pacifiers over a long period of time could cause pain when chewing or limit a person's ability to open their mouth. The position of your teeth could change after a year, too, if you're sucking on it for hours. He also warned there's a choking risk if you inhale it while you sleep.
For those thinking it's helping them psychologically, psychologists believe the real solution is facing the challenge head-on instead of avoiding it. “The real solution is not to treat themselves as a child, but to face the challenge directly and to solve it,” Zhang Mo, a psychologist in Chengdu, told the media. As noted by Health and Me, the explanation could be a regression phenomenon. Adults overwhelmed by stress are subconsciously reverting to behaviors from earlier, more secure stages of life, like self-soothing during infancy.