High School Teacher Is 'Uncomfortable' Because Many Of Her Students Are Sucking On Pacifiers During Class
Teens will be teens...
CarlosBarquero | Shutterstock A teacher recently complained on Reddit that many of her students have started using pacifiers during school, and the behavior disrupts her class. If you are immediately thinking she must be a kindergarten teacher, think again. She is a high school English teacher, and she argued that the trend not only makes her uncomfortable, but it impacts classroom engagement.
Pacifiers are making a comeback for some reason. Not to be confused with the ones for babies, these pacifiers are designed for adults to use. Yes, people are actively using pacifiers in public now, and it's been getting some controversial reactions.
A high school teacher said many of her students have started using pacifiers, and the trend is making her 'uncomfortable.'
She explained that the trend started slow but recently became more popular. "It's mostly girls," the teacher wrote, "but it's across all genders." She then expressed curiosity about the purpose behind the trend, as it's bad for their teeth and, to a certain extent, unsanitary.
She certainly isn't wrong. According to the Smile Island Pediatric & Adult Dental Group, it's important to limit pacifier use in kids after the age of two and to fully discontinue it by the time they are three years old. The reason is that biting on pacifiers creates pressure that affects teeth development. It can also lead to an open bite, where the bottom and top teeth don't meet correctly. So yes, there are no dental benefits to the practice.
But the issue, the teacher argued, goes beyond her worry about the students' dental care. "They can't talk while sucking on them," she wrote, "which makes classroom engagement even worse." To fix this, she tried asking them to put them away during class, but she added, "it seems impossible to manage."
Adult pacifiers were a trend in the '90s.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when pacifiers became popular among adults, but many argue that the trend started in the late 1990s with the rise of rave culture in the United States. The Department of Justice explained that to prevent involuntary teeth clenching, a side effect of the psychoactive drug MDMA, rave-goers began chewing on pacifiers.
So did that trend just come back, and are students trying to look like rave-goers in the classroom? According to the teacher, no. She argued that these pacifiers are not the rave ones. What she meant is that there's another trend going on, and it has a different aesthetic.
As one commenter, also a teacher, noted, "This is exactly what I was going to explain. My students do this, too, but they’re not doing drugs. They are just copying what they see in pics and videos." Another wrote, "I was wondering if they are copying that 'vintage' 90s vibe that is popular again without realizing that most of us were doing crazy drugs and the pacifier was the result of that."
The '90s are definitely back when it comes to fashion and style so the rave culture trends could be bleeding into teen culture, but thanks to social media, pacifier use in teens and adults is on the rise for stress relief as well.
There's a growing trend among adults to use pacifiers for stress relief.
The New York Post reported on a growing social media trend that seems to have originated in China where pacifiers have been marketed to adults as everything from ADHD treatment and sleep aids, to stress relievers. According to Vice, psychologists have dubbed this the “regression phenomenon.” It's the idea that when life becomes overwhelming, you find comfort in the self-soothing practices used in childhood.
Vadim Kolobanov | Shutterstock
But unlike sleeping with a teddy or coloring after a long stressful day, sucking on pacifiers isn't great for your dental health. So, if you're an adult or teen trying to deal with stress, what can you do instead? According to the Mayo Clinic, you have quite a few options: physical activity, eating a healthy diet, practicing meditation, or even just sleeping with your childhood blankie are all better than reverting back to the binkie.
The thing is, these teens are just doing what teens do. They've found a pretty innocuous activity that makes adults roll their eyes at the absurdity of it and that drives them to do it more. There's was a time when boys having long hair was scandalous. This is no different. As one commenter wisely pointed out, "The stupidity of any trend has no impact on its popularity."
If the teacher can ignore it for a little longer, chances are there will be a new trend and adult pacifiers will fall into obscurity. It's just the nature of adolescence.
Matt Machado is a writer studying journalism at the University of Central Florida. He covers relationships, psychology, celebrities, pop culture, and human interest topics.
