A Derm Gets Real About TikTok's Anti-Aging "Side Straw" Hack

Has preventative beauty officially lost the plot? It used to be pretty straightforward — apply sunscreen, start a retinol, and try baby Botox if you feel so compelled.

Maybe it’s just the internet age, but now every facial movement seems to be getting analyzed for potential wrinkle liability. Side sleeping, tech neck, even smiling... which brings us to the latest habit currently under scrutiny: If you’re sipping from a straw, congratulations — you may be giving yourself lip wrinkles. That’s right, the way you’re drinking from your Stanley is now part of the anti-aging conversation.

Enter: the side straw.

Shaped like the number seven, the viral contraption is designed so you can sip without moving your lips at all. The logic behind it is, you’re reducing the repetitive pursing motion that often gets blamed for vertical lines forming around the mouth. It’s a tiny tweak with big ambitions. But the question remains — as it does with most TikTok beauty hacks — does it actually work? Keep reading for everything to know about the side straw phenomenon, straight from a dermatologist.

The Straw That Broke The Internet

If you’ve been around BeautyTok long enough, the side straw probably looks familiar. Every couple of years, it seems to pop back up on FYPs, accompanied by a fresh round of debate about what mundane habits could be secretly aging your face.

An early viral moment came in 2022, when beauty creator Lauren Erro posted a video testing the curved design, saying it “might be the best invention for anti-aging ever.” Two years later, it re-entered the chat when creator Michaela Scott tried what she called an “anti-wrinkle straw” in a TikTok that racked up more than 355,000 likes.

The idea behind the invention is easy enough to understand. With a sharp bend at the top, it allows you to sip from the horizontal portion, so you can keep your lips relatively relaxed instead of puckering them forward. Per usual, the comment section was split into two camps: the intrigued and the exhausted.

“This is such a tiring way of living,” one user wrote. Another chimed in with an alternative philosophy to aging gracefully: “I prefer to have fun in life.”

Still, curiosity seems to have won out. According to The Derma Lab, global searches for “side straws” are now hovering around 72,000 per month, with interest rising 38% over the past quarter — suggesting the anti-wrinkle straw could be facing yet another comeback.

Does It Actually Work?

As with every good TikTok trend, there’s a kernel of truth behind the concern. “The short answer is yes, drinking from a straw can cause perioral wrinkles to form,” says board-certified dermatologist Dr. Adarsh Vijay Mudgil. “Dynamic facial wrinkles are created by moving the facial expression muscles, including those around the mouth.”

But before you spiral about every iced coffee you’ve ever had, he says it’s only one part of the aging equation. “It’s hard to quantify how much facial movement contributes to wrinkles relative to other stimuli like sun exposure, genetics, or smoking,” Mudgil explains. “But limiting movement certainly helps stave off wrinkle formation — that’s the principle behind Botox.”

So does the viral side straw actually solve the problem? “Not really,” he says. “It just alters the distribution of wrinkle formation.” Basically, the lines might show up somewhere else — which isn’t quite the anti-aging loophole TikTok was hoping for.

What the trend does reveal, though, how early people are thinking about aging now. In fact, Mudgil says he’s seeing younger patients increasingly interested in preventative strategies — calling it “a TikTok phenomenon” in its own right.

If the goal is actually keeping lines at bay, he suggests going back to the basics: daily sunscreen, a prescription retinoid cream at night, and preventative Botox when appropriate. As he puts it, “that's the scientifically-rooted way to prevent premature aging.”

So sippers, rest assured: skin care matters a lot more than your straw placement.