Searches for looksmaxxing grew 173 percent in the year to July 2026, peaking at 368,000 in one month. Mogging overtook mewing, and bonesmashing, a harmful practice, more than tripled. This page publishes the full search data.
The Short Version
- The word looksmaxxing averaged 1,967 US searches a month in 2018. In the first seven months of 2026 it averaged 221,571, a 112x rise over eight years.
- Mogging overtook mewing in 2026: 188,571 average monthly searches against mewing's 76,857.
- Mewing peaked in 2024 at a 374,417 monthly average, with one month at 673,000, and has since fallen by roughly four fifths.
- Bonesmashing, a practice that injures people and has no supporting evidence, is having its biggest year on record: a 12,357 monthly average in 2026, up from 164 in 2021.
- The largest looksmaxxing forum, looksmax.org, reports 207,018 members and 30.3 million posts on its own homepage.
- Every number on this page comes from the dataset published at the end of it.
How This Data Was Collected
The search figures are Google search volumes for the United States, English language, pulled from the DataForSEO Labs database on 2 September 2026. The database clusters spelling variants, so looksmaxxing, looksmaxing and looksmax share one series, and mogged folds into mogging. Yearly figures are averages of monthly values; 2026 covers January through July. Two limits are worth stating plainly. The canthal tilt series begins in 2025 in this database, so no earlier history is claimed for it. And the abbreviation psl mostly belongs to a cricket league in search data, so this page tracks the phrases psl scale and psl rating and never the bare abbreviation.
The community figures come from one source, read once: the public statistics block on the looksmax.org homepage, captured the same day. They are self-reported by the forum, and this page labels them that way. The full table is downloadable: state-of-looksmaxxing.csv, 18 rows, one per term or community statistic, with sources and pull dates in every row.
The Lexicon, Ranked by Search Volume
| Term | Avg monthly searches (US) | Change in 12 months | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Looksmaxxing (all spellings) | 165,000 | +173% | April 2026, at 368,000 |
| Mogging | 165,000 | +82% | May 2026, at 246,000 |
| Mewing | 90,500 | -55% | October 2025, at 110,000 |
| Hunter eyes | 49,500 | +22% | April 2026, at 74,000 |
| Canthal tilt | 33,100 | +83% | May 2026, at 90,500 |
| PSL scale | 33,100 | +403% | January 2026, at 60,500 |
| Negative canthal tilt | 27,100 | +50% | May 2026, at 40,500 |
| Positive canthal tilt | 9,900 | +83% | January 2026, at 14,800 |
| Bonesmashing | 9,900 | +238% | March 2026, at 18,100 |
| Jawline exercises | 9,900 | -70% | August 2025, at 18,100 |
| Gonial angle | 8,100 | +23% | December 2025, at 9,900 |
| PSL rating | 6,600 | +662% | May 2026, at 14,800 |
| Mewing before and after | 2,900 | -47% | January 2026, at 3,600 |
| Softmaxxing | 1,000 | +83% | April 2026, at 1,900 |
| Hardmaxxing | 1,000 | +50% | April 2026, at 1,900 |
Every term in this table is defined in one sentence on the glossary, and the vocabulary as a whole is graded claim by claim on What Is Looksmaxxing? Terms, Claims, and Evidence. This page measures the words; those pages judge them.
The Breakout Timeline
Five terms have enough history in the database to date their breakouts. The umbrella term broke out in 2023, when its average jumped from 12,208 monthly searches to 56,425, more than fourfold in one year. Mogging broke the same year and kept climbing. Mewing is older: it was already at a 39,850 average in 2019, five years before its 2024 peak.
| Year (avg monthly, US) | Looksmaxxing | Mogging | Mewing | Bonesmashing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 1,967 | 1,600 | 10,200 | no data |
| 2019 | 3,300 | 1,942 | 39,850 | 110 |
| 2020 | 6,058 | 2,750 | 66,850 | 104 |
| 2021 | 7,050 | 6,867 | 50,925 | 164 |
| 2022 | 12,208 | 8,125 | 97,167 | 881 |
| 2023 | 56,425 | 21,692 | 139,875 | 5,332 |
| 2024 | 88,417 | 98,167 | 374,417 | 3,408 |
| 2025 | 59,208 | 74,833 | 119,667 | 3,217 |
| 2026 (Jan to Jul) | 221,571 | 188,571 | 76,857 | 12,357 |
Mogging Overtook Mewing
The vocabulary is shifting from practices to judgments. The two biggest practice terms are falling: mewing is down 55 percent year on year and jawline exercises are down 70 percent. The terms that rate and compare people are all rising: mogging is up 82 percent, PSL scale is up 403 percent, and PSL rating is up 662 percent. In 2024 mewing still out-searched mogging nearly four to one. In 2026 mogging leads.
One reading of that shift: the subculture's how-to phase is cooling while its scoring phase grows. This dataset cannot prove a cause, and this page does not claim one. It records that the words people reach for have changed, and in which direction.
The Harmful Fringe Is Growing
Bonesmashing means striking the facial bone in the hope it thickens. It injures people, it has no supporting evidence, and no page on this site describes how to do it. The search data still has to be reported honestly: interest averaged 110 monthly searches in 2019 and 12,357 in 2026, with a peak of 18,100 in March 2026. Its biggest year on record is this one. The claim-by-claim grading of this and every other looksmaxxing practice is on the looksmaxxing guide, which also lists the practices marked actively harmful.
How Big Is the Community
The largest looksmaxxing forum publishes its own totals. On 2 September 2026 the looksmax.org homepage reported 207,018 members, 2,273,173 threads and 30,319,488 posts. Those are the forum's own figures, not an independent count, and member totals say nothing about how many accounts are active. They still set a floor on scale: the community is large enough to sustain thirty million posts.
What a Measurement Adds
Most of the rising terms in this dataset are requests for a verdict: a rating, a tier, a comparison. A forum answers those with opinions that change by thread. A published formula answers with the same number for the same photo every time. The free scan on the Looksmax AI Rating page is that second kind of answer, it runs on your device, and a score is geometry, not worth.