Time changes, age changes and people change, but one thing that always seems to stay the same is teenagers’ habit of finding harmful trends to engage in. I could go on and on about all of the harmful things teenagers do daily, but for today I will only focus on one: ZYN. ZYN is a nicotine gum company that was created to help people with addictions from smoking. However, with recent popularity coming from social media like TikTok and Instagram, people who don’t have smoking addictions are using ZYN simply because they think that it is cool.
I first heard about ZYN a couple of months ago when a video on Instagram showed up on my feed. It was someone putting two pieces of nicotine-loaded chewing gum inside their upper lip before a baseball game. The comments were all filled with people joking around and talking about how cool and funny that guy was. Having fun with your friends is fine, but social media made ZYN look harmless.
With the popularization of ZYN through social media and teenage trends, people are quick to consume this harmful product without looking at long-term consequences. At some point, we need to hold each other accountable for popularizing these habits, such as nicotine addictions. According to The National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Being without nicotine for too long can cause a regular user to experience irritability, craving, depression, anxiety, cognitive and attention deficits, sleep disturbances and increased appetite,” Sure, there are worse drugs to use than nicotine that can cause much more dangerous side effects, but being irritable and depressed certainly isn’t something that anyone should want to have.
This feeling of nausea is also a common side effect of ZYN. One of my friends, who will remain anonymous, had the weakest dose that ZYN offers and became nauseous almost immediately after taking the gum. He was so nauseated that I had to go fill up his water bottle for him because he feared that he would vomit if he sat up from his chair. As far as benefits from recreational usage of ZYN go, I haven’t heard of many. Some people “say,” they like the buzz and how it makes them feel, but I believe that these people are just too embarrassed to say that they use the gum because they gave themselves a nicotine addiction.
This is just another perfect example of how a trend makes people believe that just because a product isn’t as bad as others it isn’t as threatening. Nobody, and I mean nobody has ever benefited from an addiction of any sort, so giving yourself a nicotine addiction because you don’t want to get hooked on vaping or smoking isn’t logical.
Yes, I understand that peer pressure is an enormous factor when it comes to ZYN, however, it’s better to do what’s right for you, no matter how hard it is. If your friends won’t be your friends because you don’t want to consume harmful substances with them, should you really be spending time with them?
