Trending: Warning! Emo hair can (er, might) damage your health

Is your teenager suffering from Emo Fringe? Now you may have a medical reason for forbidding the dreadful 'do, rather than just an aesthetic one. Andrew Hogan, a Tasmanian optometrist, suggests in an interview with the Hobart-based newspaper The Mercury that "if a young emo chap has a fringe covering one eye all the time, that eye won't see a lot of detail ... and if it happens from a young age, that eye can become amblyopic". Amblyopia is also known as "lazy eye" syndrome.

A Hobart hairdresser, one Roseanne Anderson, also feared for kids' postures, should they succumb to Emo fringe. Fans of 30 Seconds to Mars are often forced to tilt their heads to one side to get a clear view past their bangs, Anderson says. "I have to wonder how they don't get a stiff neck."

But US amblyopia specialist Dr Leonard Press told MSNBC that kids would be at risk from the eye condition only if their haircuts blocked their vision permanently before the age of seven. Luckily, they rarely develop a taste for Panic! at the Disco until puberty.