You can buy a nail file at any nearby store and, by its name, you know exactly what it's for: your fingernails. Flip it to either side and begin shaving away at your uneven pincers until they look suitable enough for you to flaunt them. Sounds simple, right? Welp, TikTok users have found a new use for nail files that'll make your teeth shiver — literally. That's right. Nail files have, suddenly, become teeth files.
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Social media trends aren't anything new, and here's the latest proof that this way of communication is slowly eroding our hive mind. Earlier this year, the dental trend was to use store-bought three-perfect hydrogen peroxide to whiten your teeth. Dentists swiftly shut that down, claiming that users could cause irreversible damage to their mouths. But in the wake of that dying move comes this method of teeth shaving that can be equally as dangerous.
@miadio Filing my teeth down ##fyp ##dentist ##notreally
♬ I hope I make dentists cringe - miadio
As one user puts their reason for shaving down her teeth, she's "balling on a budget" so this makes sense. She starts the process and shows the before and after effects on her teeth, saying "it's not perfect, but it's significantly better." Countless other examples show that the trend is widespread and, although it must be painful, mustn't be that bad if people continue to do it.
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Dentists, however, are extremely concerned with this new development — especially in light of TikTok users' teeth whitening hacks. "The enamel on the surfaces of teeth is very thin and once it's filed down will never grow back," says Dr. Kami Hoss, CEO of The Super Dentists. "Without the proper thickness of enamel protecting your teeth, your teeth may end up with sensitivity or pain, it will become more prone to cavities, and it will lose its' luster and its' white color (next layer, dentin, is yellow)."
@dr.m_ Another day spitting some facts about Tik Tok trends ##dentist ##nailfile ##teeth
♬ original sound - dr.m_
A dentist on TikTok posed a question to people following the trend about the future of their teeth, revealing that the problem that they're looking to fix won't be solved permanently by shaving them. "Okay, you file them and they look pretty good, but you didn't solve the original problem," he said in a video. "So what are you going to do when they're uneven again, and your teeth are even shorter?"
Check out this teeth-shaving process, if you dare, up above.
Photo via Getty