Ava Veres is dreading the pain in her wisdom teeth. The University of Queensland business and drama student can't afford a dental appointment, so she's scrolling through social media instead, watching friends consider buying whitening strips they've seen advertised online. She's not alone. A new Australian Dental Association survey found that 60 per cent of adults aged 18 to 25 are making decisions about their dental health through social media — and many are skipping professional care altogether because they simply can't pay for it.
The trend reveals a troubling gap in Australia's health system. Young adults are aging out of their parents' private insurance and moving into independent living at exactly the moment they face mounting expenses. Dental care, excluded from Medicare since its creation, has become a luxury they can't afford. The result isn't just delayed appointments. It's a generation turning to unregulated online products and DIY treatments that dental experts warn could cause serious, lasting damage.
The Cost Barrier That's Pushing Young People Away
Ryan Quigley, a law student, said going to the dentist was "not the highest priority" because of his other living expenses. His friend Maksim Krilov, a finance student, was blunt about the problem: "General dental check-ups were too expensive for a lot of young people. Medicare, in general, I think needs to cover more." These aren't complaints about luxury care. They're about basic preventive dentistry — the kind of care that catches problems early and costs far less to treat than emergency interventions.
The ADA survey, conducted in November 2025 with 25,000 respondents aged 18 and older, documented the human cost of this affordability crisis. Sixty per cent of young adults reported wisdom tooth-related issues including pain, swelling, crowding, infection and discomfort. The problem was worse in remote areas, where 65 per cent reported these issues, compared to 59 per cent in metropolitan areas. Yet many young people are delaying visits until something goes wrong — when treatment becomes more painful, more complex, and more expensive.
Angie Nilsson, vice president of the Australian Dental Association and a practitioner in public clinics in northern NSW, described the pattern bluntly: "Many are falling through the cracks when it came to oral health care because they were at an age where they had moved out of home and sometimes come off their parents' private health insurance. Unfortunately, many are delaying dental visits until something goes wrong, and by then the problem is often more painful, more complex, and more expensive to treat."
The Social Media Problem: Unregulated Products and Risky Advice
With professional care out of reach, young Australians are turning to social media for guidance. The ADA found that 60 per cent of adults aged 18 to 25 are making dental health decisions based on what they see online, including purchasing whitening products and ordering aligners and veneers for cosmetic reasons. Nilsson warned that these aren't harmless beauty experiments. "It is not something the association recommends doing without a registered dental practitioner advising and ensuring people are getting the right product, the right concentration and that it is in line with Australian regulations," she said.
Veres has seen the whitening ads and hacks circulating online. "Some of my friends had considered buying them recently," she said. The appeal is obvious: a cosmetic improvement without the cost of a dentist visit. But unregulated whitening products can damage teeth. Custom mouth guards ordered online can fail to protect during sports. Aligners without professional oversight can cause permanent misalignment.
The survey found another gap in protection: only 38 per cent of young adults who played high-impact sports were wearing mouth guards, and 13 per cent had experienced sports-related injuries involving their teeth or mouth. Nilsson stressed the stakes. "The damage that can be done by not having a custom-made mouth guard from a dental practitioner, it could be devastating."
What Government Is — and Isn't — Doing
Dental spokesperson for the Australian Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John has been pushing for structural reform. "The Greens have been calling for the reform that's needed, bringing dental care into Medicare and yet we've seen government after government fail to take the action that is needed," he said. "The Labor government just has not done enough in this area." His argument is straightforward: dental health is part of overall health. Excluding it from Medicare means excluding millions of Australians from preventive care.
The Albanese government's response emphasizes its funding contributions through the National Health Reform Agreement for public hospital services, including hospital-based dental treatment. A government spokesperson said the Commonwealth was "working closely with states and territories" to develop a new National Oral Health Plan. But these measures don't address the fundamental problem: preventive dental care remains inaccessible to young people without private insurance or significant disposable income.
Nilsson offered practical advice for those who can't access professional care immediately — brushing twice daily for two minutes with fluoride toothpaste, and spitting rather than rinsing to retain the fluoride layer. But she was clear that good daily care isn't a substitute for professional oversight, especially when problems emerge.
Why This Matters:
Dental health isn't a cosmetic issue or a personal responsibility problem. It's a structural inequality. When young Australians can't afford preventive care, they delay treatment until infections develop, wisdom teeth require extraction, or sports injuries cause permanent damage. Then they face emergency costs far exceeding what early intervention would have required. The gap in Medicare coverage means that dental care remains tied to income and insurance status, not need. Social media fills the void with unregulated products and risky advice. The survey's findings — 60 per cent of young adults making dental decisions online, 60 per cent experiencing wisdom tooth problems — aren't individual failures. They're evidence of a system that's failed to treat oral health as part of basic healthcare. Until dental care is accessible and affordable for all young Australians, not just those with private insurance, preventive care will remain a luxury, and emergency treatment will remain the norm.