Mewing Reddit Verdict: What the Threads Actually Admit
What mewing reddit actually admits past the before/afters: adult bone doesn't move, but posture is real. An honest thread-by-thread verdict.
Six weeks in. Tongue on the roof of your mouth, lips closed, chewing harder than you need to. You've caught yourself checking your side profile in the front camera again — third time today — and you can't tell if anything changed or if you're just tilting your head differently now.
So you search "mewing reddit," looking for one person who got real results and isn't selling a course.
Here's what you find when you read enough threads, and here's the direct answer: the honest reddit verdict on mewing, extracted from the threads' own follow-ups and quiet admissions, is that adults don't get bone change that survives scrutiny — they get posture, breathing habits, and better-angled photos. The hype lives in the pinned before/afters. The verdict lives downthread.
This article is about the reddit sentiment specifically. If you want the definition and the orthotropic theory behind it, that's covered in what is mewing — here we take the claim as given and audit the discourse.
Key numbers
- ~100 milliseconds — how fast a stranger forms a first impression from your face (Willis & Todorov, 2006). This is why a jawline feels high-stakes enough to chase for years.
- 2019 — the year the British Orthodontic Society expelled Mike Mew, the clinician most associated with mewing.
- 2024 — the year a UK General Dental Council tribunal found professional misconduct, with reporting at the time indicating removal from the dental register, per public reporting at the time of writing.
- 0 — controlled clinical trials we could find in the published literature, at the time of writing, demonstrating that tongue posture remodels adult facial bone.
What does mewing reddit actually conclude?
Mewing threads come in three recurring shapes. Hype threads: dramatic before/afters, huge upvotes, posted early in someone's journey. Check-in threads: six-month and one-year updates — noticeably quieter, hedged with "I also started lifting" and "might just be the angle." Post-mortems: the "I mewed for two years, here's the honest truth" posts, which converge with striking consistency on the same conclusion — the habit changed how they held their head and breathed, not their skeleton.
Split the reports by age and the pattern sharpens. Posters in their mid-teens report changes — during the exact years faces lengthen and jaws grow on their own. Adult posters report looking better in photos, then someone asks for standardized angles, and the thread goes quiet.
Caveat: forum synthesis is not a dataset — threads are self-selected, unverifiable, and I'm reading a moving culture from outside. Treat this as pattern description, not measurement.
Why do the before/after photos look so convincing?
Because most are honest photos with a wrong caption. The transformations are frequently real — it's the attribution that fails. The recurring confounds:
- Age. A 15-to-18 comparison captures normal mandibular growth. The tongue was along for the ride.
- Leanness. Losing body fat un-buries a jawline more dramatically than any oral posture could. Many updates mention a weight cut in passing, far below the title.
- Head position. Chin up, jaw slightly forward, tongue pressed up — the "after" pose itself creates the "after" jawline, in real time.
- Lens and light. Phone distance changes facial proportions on camera; overhead light manufactures shadow definition under the jaw.
- Survivorship. People who quietly saw nothing don't post retrospectives.
Caveat: a confounded photo isn't a dishonest poster — most genuinely believe the caption. That's what makes the genre persuasive.
What do the threads quietly admit?
Read the comments under any big mewing result and you'll find the discourse auditing itself. The pattern:
| The upvoted claim | The quiet admission downthread | The plausible mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Dramatic jawline change credited to mewing | A weight cut happened over the same window | Fat loss revealing existing bone |
| "Face looks more forward-grown" | The two photos differ in tilt, lens, and light | Pose and camera, not growth |
| Stunning teen transformation | Poster was mid-puberty the whole time | Adolescent growth |
| "Adults can remodel too, be patient" | Timeline quietly extends to five or ten years | An unfalsifiable goalpost |
This suggests the one rule worth taking from the entire discourse — call it Receipts, not verdicts: accept no appearance claim without same lens, same distance, same lighting, same leanness, same head position, months apart. Apply that standard and almost no adult mewing before/after on reddit clears the bar. Notice that the standard isn't anti-mewing; it's pro-evidence. The threads fail it on their own terms — the admissions are already sitting in the comments.
Caveat: absence of clean evidence is not proof of zero effect — it's proof the effect, if any, is too small to survive honest photography.
What does mewing reddit get right?
Concede the real wins sincerely, because there are some. Chronic mouth-breathing is worth taking seriously — that's mainstream advice, not fringe. Resting tongue posture and lips-together habits cost nothing and can improve how your face carries in person. Better head posture genuinely changes how your jawline reads from the side — today, not in five years. And the threads are right that childhood is different: facial growth is still happening, which is exactly why questions about kids belong with a pediatric dentist or orthodontist, not a subreddit.
The history cuts both ways too. Mewing's champion, Mike Mew, was expelled by the British Orthodontic Society in 2019, and in 2024 a General Dental Council tribunal found professional misconduct — per public reporting at the time of writing. Threads that mention this get called blackpilled; they're just informed.
Where the discourse escalates past posture into rebuilding eye sockets, that's its own niche claim — covered head-on in mewing for hunter eyes. And if forward growth itself is the real concern, the actual options by age — including the surgical ones adults sometimes conflate with mewing — are laid out in how to get forward growth.
Caveat: crediting posture and breathing is not a backdoor endorsement of skeletal claims — the two live at different evidence tiers, a distinction the broader scene often blurs, as we cover in is looksmaxxing pseudoscience.
Should you keep mewing — and what should you do instead?
Keep the free parts, drop the prophecy:
- Keep: nasal breathing, lips closed at rest, tongue on the palate, head stacked over shoulders. Defensible habits at zero cost.
- Drop: the expectation of skeletal change, the five-year timeline, and the front-camera side-profile checks. If you're checking your profile several times a day, that's the habit taxing you — appearance preoccupation is common and treatable, and it deserves more care than a forum will ever give it.
- Redirect the effort where the threads themselves locate real change: leanness, sleep, skin, hair, and learning your angles.
- Run your own receipts. One photo a month, same spot, same distance, same light. You'll know more in ninety days than a thousand threads can tell you.
And notice what the search was really asking. "Mewing reddit" usually isn't curiosity about tongues — it's "does my jaw read bad to other people?" A mirror can't answer that and neither can a meme forum. The missing axis is the read a stranger forms in the first second of seeing your face — which is what our free AI first-impression test measures, on a 70–155 perception axis, in private, with no thread attached. Fair warning in the same spirit as this article: it's not a validated clinical instrument either. It's one honest data point — which is one more than a before/after with a wrong caption.
The bottom line
The mewing reddit verdict, assembled from the threads' own admissions: adult bone doesn't move, posture and breathing are real, teen results are growth wearing a hashtag, and the convincing photos are confounded by weight, tilt, lens, and light. Keep the free habits, apply receipts, not verdicts to every claim you meet, and if the underlying question is how your face actually lands on strangers — get that answer directly instead of asking a comment section to guess.
Studies referenced
- Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions: Making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face. Psychological Science, 17(7), 592–598.
Frequently asked questions
Does mewing actually work according to reddit?
Read past the pinned before/afters and the honest reddit consensus is narrower than the hype: adults reliably report better posture, less mouth-breathing, and better-angled photos — not moved bone. Teen results are confounded with normal growth. For what mewing is and the mechanics behind the claim, see what is mewing.
Why do mewing before and after photos on reddit look so real?
Because most of them are honest photos with a wrong caption. Weight loss, adolescent growth, head tilt, lighting, and lens distance can each transform a jawline on camera without a single millimeter of bone change. This is a general pattern in appearance forums — is looksmaxxing pseudoscience breaks down how to sort evidence from lore.
Can mewing give you hunter eyes like reddit says?
That specific claim is the most speculative branch of the whole discourse, and even mewing-friendly threads rarely defend it for adults when pressed. The eye-area anatomy involved is skeletal and set early. We cover that niche claim on its own terms in mewing for hunter eyes.
Is mewing worth trying as an adult?
The free parts — nasal breathing, lips closed, tongue resting on the palate, better head posture — cost nothing and are defensible habits regardless of what they do to your face. What they will not do, per the threads' own quiet admissions, is remodel an adult skeleton. If forward growth itself is your concern, how to get forward growth covers what's actually on the table at different ages.
How do I know if my jawline actually reads bad to other people?
Not by mirror-checking your side profile, and not by asking a forum that answers in memes. Our free AI first-impression test measures the read a stranger forms in the first second, on a 70–155 perception axis, in private. It is not a validated clinical instrument either — treat it as one honest data point, not a diagnosis.