Background

This controversial topic is very popular among students. It is often argued whether gum benefits students academically or that it is just a distraction. Many middle schools and high schools ban the chewing of gum during class to stop the so-called “distractions” it creates. Whereas some high schools and many colleges allow and almost encourage their students to chew gum to help them really focus on the work they are doing. So, what is the right answer?

Who’s Behind the Claim?

Tik Tok user, nickcheld, posted a video visible to the public responding to this controversial topic. Captioning the video, “LIES that SCHOOLS teach- part 1”, he claims that gum not only helps you focus, but also relieves stress and tension. Nickcheld backs up his claim by using the military as an example and throwing in a statistic, “Gum can increase your memory up to 35%.”

What Sources Are Saying?

After just typing the three words, “Does gum help…”, multiple articles regarding my topic appeared. Every article that I clicked on and studied carefully all said pretty much presented the same claim. Even though these were all completely separate articles, they share the same central idea that gum indeed was beneficial for improving concentration.

What’s the Evidence?

After typing just a few words into google search, my whole topic popped up. The first article that appeared was written by Luis Villazon, a writer for the BBC Science Focus Magazine. Knowing that this is a reliable source and all claims that were made were backed up by creditable sources, it is safe to say that chewing gum is beneficial to helping with concentration. Another article inspired by Kate Morgan, part of the British Psychological Society (BPS), also supports the idea that gum is more beneficial than useless. Morgan’s article tells about the study she conducted where two separate groups of participants, ones that chewed gum and the others that didn’t, were to listen to an audio and answer questions. The results of this experiment showed that the test group where the participants chewed gum had a faster reaction time and more accurate answers than the participants that did not chew gum.

Rating

In conclusion, the Tik Tok posted by nickcheld can be rated as legit. I personally do believe, however, that the video could use more context to make it more reliable.