People Say These 28 Habits Could Be Slowly But Surely Destroying Our Health

We all look back and wonder how people ever thought things like smoking cigarettes, tanning beds, or riding without a seatbelt were totally normal.

But if history repeats itself, what everyday habits and products might we be overlooking today that could pose serious health risks? That’s exactly what Reddit user u/House-Of-Black-07 wanted to find out when they recently asked, “What will turn out to be this generation’s ‘oh shit, smoking causes cancer’ moment?” The responses were equal parts eye-opening and unsettling. Here’s what people said:

1. “Online gambling is the next opioid crisis.”

“Sports betting is gambling. Of course, we already know this, just like previous generations knew that smoking wasn’t helpful — but we’re treating it as an almost benign thing, while more and more (especially male) youths get suckered into gambling addictions.”

—Faleya

2. “Mass scale nutrient deficiency. Not to be confused with a food shortage.”

—ReallyNiceDonkey

Related: “Funny Tweets That Absolutely Destroyed Me”

3. “The slow and steady creep of unwarranted surveillance.”

4. “‘Oh shit, I should have also eaten fiber, not just protein, I now have colon cancer.'”

—Capable_Suit_7335

5. “Excessive screen time and social media addiction. I think future generations will look back and wonder why we normalized spending so many hours staring at screens every day.”

—piyush-87“Fucked up necks and spines from staring at phones all day.”—lostinthegwn“It can cause the same level of cognitive impairment as someone who has dementia. But instead of it happening when you are in your senior years, it is happening in children and teens, or any age really, as long as you are constantly exposing yourself to social media on a screen.”—AnOkayMuffin

“The way you feel when you see an old picture of a toddler smoking a cigarette is how you should feel when you see a toddler using an iPad.”

6. “When we no longer have clean drinking water, we’ll realize that building subdivisions and roads on wetlands wasn’t such a hot idea.”

—lovelyb1ch66

7. “People are gonna be like, ‘Oh shit! Vaccines don’t cause autism, and you actually need them!!'”

—Keobooks

8. “Peptide stacking. Apparently, GLP-1 and Ozempic are only the most mainstream examples. Some people (especially bodybuilders) inject all kinds of unregulated amino acids for all kinds of different purposes. Even if they do whatever you hope they do, don’t be surprised if screwing with your body’s chemistry also screws with your body’s chemistry in ways you didn’t expect.”

—Kerb755

Related: “Creepy Camping Stories That Will Make You Rethink The Great Outdoors”

9. “Scented plug-ins. I used to be a custodian at a school at night, and some of the rooms had plug-ins that smelled so strong they gave me a headache. I don’t know how those kids or teachers are able to breathe it in all day.”

10. “Microplastics. My primary care doc has been warning me about them for about 15 years. He claims that eventually we will come to view microplastics in the same way that we now view asbestos.”

—RickLeeTaker

11. “Alcohol, y’all. It’s alcohol. It has been moved to Group 1 carcinogen, meaning there is sufficient evidence now that it does not correlate, but causes certain types of cancer, even if you are a light drinker. In other words, there is no safe level of drinking. This came out about two to three years ago, and yet we haven’t heard much about it, aside from a few articles.”

12. “Turns out those ‘harmless’ common colds aren’t harmless. Not only has COVID entered the rotation, but I doubt the flu (or even the rhinovirus) is as safe long-term as society seems to think. For real though, is everyone gonna need to end up with a nasty case of post-viral chronic illness for society to take this sh*t seriously?”

—0xEmmy“COVID. COVID damages every organ in the body and the blood vessels. Well documented. It’s the AIDS crisis all over again. Why must it take humans sooooo long to change behavior when we have ample evidence?”—Sea-Split214

13. “Supplements cause a variety of health problems, including organ failure. Dietary supplements have grown tremendously in the last decade. They’re essentially unregulated, often taken without medical advice or supervision, often overused, and the long-term effects of most have never been studied. With the huge increase in supply and consumption since 2020, especially in young adults, I think we’ll see a wave of long-term effects in twenty years or so. Then we’ll start regulation.”

—blueluck

14. “I’ve got no idea what the science about this might say, but I have a feeling that near-constant headphone and earbud usage is going to make a lot of us deaf someday.”

—Cheap_Advisor8766

Related: “22 Times People Had Terrifying Real-Life Experiences Like Something Out Of The Twilight Zone”

15. “Vaping.”

16. “It’s gonna be skincare. Tons of women use excessive skincare routines, including lotions, day and night creams, face masks, and chemical peels. I’m sure we’re eventually going to find out that all of these products are packed with synthetic materials and chemicals that are absorbing directly into the bloodstream and doing crazy shit.”

—donezo017892

17. “All of the fingernail decoration methods. The process of getting fake nails put on and removed is all chemical and usually involves concentrated UV light exposure.”

—NetflixandJill

18. “Unpopular opinion warning: Tattoos. In recent years, studies have shown that injecting ink into your body isn’t a great idea.”

—finsox“Tattoo ink getting into the lymphatic system and bloodstream can’t be healthy. And nobody wants to mention it cause they like their tattoos. They serve about as much purpose as a cigarette.”—Steven1282

19. “Influencer culture. Imagine explaining to your grandkids that people destroyed their self-esteem for free because strangers liked filtered selfies.”

20. “The full recognition of how deadly cars are not only from a crash perspective, but the overall impact that exhaust fumes, as well as the brake and tire dust, have on our environment and the human body via the nano-particles.”

—Blitqz21l

21. “The sun causing skin damage and worse, cancer. It’s been known for decades, but I feel that knowledge skipped this generation. Everyone is obsessed with getting that perfect caramel skin. They spend hours baking under the sun, covered in tanning oils.”

—Particular_Rise_4456

22. “Edibles. People are using old habits and old forms of the drug to extrapolate their risk assessments. ‘Oh, marijuana is totally safe to use, you can’t overdose on it, and it makes you shit rainbows!’ No. Smoking weaker strains of it from decades past was functionally impossible to overdose on, but people are now eating tens, in some cases hundreds, of milligrams in a sitting. They’re doing it regularly. And what really is a black box here is that when you eat cannabis, there is a whole chain of completely novel metabolites that result.”

“We have no idea whatsoever what the consequence of that will be. There are zero long-term studies, and the chemistry is very complex. Maybe nothing will happen; I hope this is the outcome. But that is 100% a dice roll at this point. No one has any right to feel assured that this is safe. There is sadly a pretty meaningful likelihood that in the late 2040s we’re going to see rashes of weird colorectal, stomach, and/or liver cancers from this, on top of other pathologies. As with anything, moderation is strongly advisable.”

—GrinchWhoStoleEaster

Related: “All The Dark, Terrible, And Upsetting Things I Learned This Week”

23. “Office work and tech will leave us all with horrendous musculoskeletal issues. I was at the physio for an injury, and the number of posters highlighting tech neck and poor posture from working at a desk says it all. I can’t talk because I have to remind myself not to sit like a pretzel.”

—Bubbly_North_2180

24. “Deli meats. They’ve been proven to be a carcinogen, but a good number of people eat sandwiches every day.”

25. “This will probably get a lot of downvotes, but porn and porn addiction.”

—rubbereruben

26. “I think the weight loss drugs are going to be a problem. Some people already lean on them a little too much, and they suppress a lot more than just appetites. They make people stop caring about things they normally do. That’s why it works at stopping people from eating and smoking. It’s not the eating or smoking, it’s attacking. It’s the joy that those things bring that’s attacking. You could be someone who likes fishing, and Ozempic will make you stop caring about fishing. You could like painting, writing, or dancing, and it’ll make you stop caring about those things. You could love your spouse for decades, then stop caring about them after you take the drugs.”

—everlyafterhappy

27. “I think it will be all the energy drinks. I’m old enough that these things didn’t exist when I was a kid. Now I work with some people in their 20s, and I’m shocked at how many of them drink these every day. Nobody knows what those drinks do to a person’s body long term. So this whole generation basically signed up to be guinea pigs without realizing it.”

28. And finally, “Air fryers. Every time my brother uses the air fryer, the stench of burning chemicals is unbearable. I make sure to stay out of the room for a while afterward, and I don’t eat the food he makes in there.”

—Impressive_Escape95

Thoughts?? Have any of these things already been on your radar, or can you think of other potential health risks that are hiding in plain sight? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or via the anonymous form below.

Your contribution could be featured in a follow-up BuzzFeed Community post.

Your daily brain workout: Anyone Who Can Actually Complete This 25-Word Mega Word Chain Deserves A Medal And Bragging Rights Forever

Also in Internet Finds: “People Are Sharing The Wild, Unexplainable Things They’ve Witnessed In The Wilderness”

Also in Internet Finds: “Disturbing Acts People Witnessed That Cannot Be Unseen”

Read it on BuzzFeed.com