Who are ‘silver tooth kids’ and why is the internet calling them ‘bad’?
A viral social media trend labels children with stainless-steel dental crowns as 'silver tooth kids' and associates them with unruly behavior. The article clarifies that these crowns are standard medical treatments for tooth decay and have no correlation with a child's personality.
Why it matters
It highlights how social media trends can misinterpret medical procedures and stigmatize children based on superficial physical traits.
Scroll through Instagram or other social media platforms and you may come across a peculiar description of children: “silver tooth kids”. The phrase is often accompanied by videos of young children being loud, mischievous, cheeky or downright unruly. Some posts joke that a child with a silver crown is automatically the one who will cause trouble, swear, fight with siblings or refuse to listen to adults.It is funny on the surface, but there is one problem with the trend: the silver tooth has nothing to do with a child’s behaviour.The term actually comes from a very ordinary piece of paediatric dental treatment. What social media has turned into a personality stereotype is, in reality, usually a stainless-steel crown placed on a damaged baby tooth.
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