One of the main goals of oral hygiene education for children and teenagers is to learn to look after their oral health as adults. However, a recent study has shown that millennials’ ability to brush their teeth and remove plaque is still inadequate.
A recent study by researchers at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, involving 98 teenagers, has given millennials a failing grade in oral hygiene.
Although dentists, dental hygienists and educators generally teach children to brush the tooth surfaces with circular and vertical movements and never horizontal ones, the young people in this study spent almost 40% of their time scrubbing horizontally on the tooth surfaces facing the outside of the mouth.
When asked to try as hard as they could, the teenagers responded by greatly increasing the effort and time spent brushing the same areas (the biting surfaces, the visible surfaces of the teeth, the front teeth) while still neglecting the surfaces facing the palate, even though they had been shown how to brush their teeth correctly.
The study showed that young people have little awareness of the importance of proper oral hygiene. Millennials tend to brush the biting surfaces most, probably influenced by a childhood idea that tooth decay is the only real threat to dental health. Young children, in fact, are taught that tooth decay mainly affects the biting surfaces of the teeth.
While this is true for children, in adulthood most tooth decay develops on the side and interproximal surfaces, and the risk of plaque-related gum inflammation increases, far exceeding the risk of decay and potentially progressing to periodontitis. It is essential to help those approaching adulthood understand this.
Given that the teenagers in this study knew they were being watched while brushing and therefore made more effort than their average peers, we can conclude that education in proper oral hygiene is still an open issue.
In future, new strategies will be needed to help young people understand the importance of effective oral hygiene, so that they can protect their smile for as long as possible.
Source: Renate Deinzer “Toothbrushing: to the best of one’s abilities is possibly not good enough,” BMC Oral Health October 2018
