\n
\t\t\tO \n\tThe videos arrived with the narrative progression of a course syllabus. First came explainers on \u201cheightism,\u201d or discrimination based on someone\u2019s height<\/a>. Dating was a frequent point of frustration, with being tall treated as a prerequisite for being considered at all.<\/p>\n \n\tThen, slowly but surely, strategies on what you can do about it.<\/p>\n \n\tEventually, I was watching teenagers discuss something called erda. They posted updates on how much they\u2019d grown and compared notes on side effects. Some showed tape measures against marks on a wall; others labeled videos by how many days they\u2019d been taking it. Erda, it turns out, was short for erdafitinib, a cancer drug that the boys on my feed believed could make them taller, pointing to reports of unexpected growth in children being treated for cancer. They were willing to endure debilitating symptoms to find out.<\/p>\n \n\tAbout half an hour into my conversation with Zak, a 17-year-old TikToker in New York, he tells me he had been preparing for the possibility of a hospital stay. He\u2019d been taking erda on and off since he was 15, and after bouts of joint pain and nosebleeds, he expected that something might eventually go wrong. \u201cI was literally saving money every single day. I was putting money aside from my work and everything just for a medical bill from erda.\u201d He says he bought the drug from overseas online vendors, initially paying $300 for a month\u2019s supply.<\/p>\n \n\tZak says height became particularly important to him as he spent more time on social media. He remembers videos of women discussing how tall a man needed to be for them to consider dating them. At school, he says he was made fun of for being shorter than girls in his class. \u201cI don\u2019t like other people towering over me, and I don\u2019t like having to look up to people,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to put it, but it feels like I\u2019m not in control.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tErdafitinib, sold under the brand name Balversa, was first approved in 2019 to treat certain advanced bladder cancers in adults. Doctors have also used it off-label in clinical trials of children with rare cancers of the central nervous system. The drug\u2019s known side effects are nothing short of gnarly: its prescribing information<\/a> lists diarrhea, pain in the limbs, nausea, and nails separating from their nail beds, as well as excess phosphate in the blood, which can cause mineral deposits in soft tissues.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn a statement, a spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson, which markets Balversa, expressed concern about online content appearing to show young people using prescription drugs for unapproved purposes or without medical supervision. \u201cIt has not been approved to increase height, and its safety and effectiveness have not been established for that purpose or for any use in any children or adolescents,\u201d they said, adding that the company urges patients to consult qualified health professionals about treatment and to only use medicines from verified sources under medical supervision.<\/p>\n \n\tZak reports nosebleeds, severely dry skin, and pain that made ordinary movements difficult. \u201cStretching my arm felt like my wrist was going to tear off,\u201d he says. \u201cWaking up, it felt like my spine was bent. I had to spend one hour of just stretching so my spine feels better.\u201d Even then, he says, the pain persisted.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen we talk, he\u2019s stopped taking the drug, though he\u2019s ultimately pleased with the results and is already thinking about starting again. By his own measurements, he says he grew several inches between roughly ages 15 and 17 while taking erda on and off. He says his height had previously plateaued.<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \t\tA Few More Inches\t<\/p>\n \n\tAdalbert Raimann, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, is an author of an erdafitinib study often cited by heightmaxxers. Published online<\/a> in July 2024 in the peer-reviewed journal Hormone Research in Paediatrics, it described unexpected growth in two children with central nervous system tumors.<\/p>\n \n\tRaimann explains that, during puberty, growth takes place in cartilage near the ends of bones, known as growth plates. Those plates fuse once we reach our full height, around early adulthood. Erdafitinib blocks proteins called fibroblast growth factor receptors. One of them, FGFR3, normally helps limit bone growth; blocking it can allow growth to speed up while the plates are still active.<\/p>\n \n\tOver video chat, Raimann stresses that why those children were receiving the drug matters. Doctors were trying to keep children with rare, life-threatening cancers alive after other treatments had failed. That meant using a drug not approved for children and tolerating serious side effects.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAnd those receptors we\u2019re targeting with erda, they\u2019re present in basically every cell,\u201d he says. \u201cSo we have no idea, not in adults and especially not in kids in this developing system, what we are doing in five to 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter those growth plates have fully closed, Raimann says, there\u2019s no way to naturally grow taller. It\u2019s why some adults in the heightmaxxing world turn to dangerous and excruciating leg-lengthening surgeries, which involve cutting the leg bones and gradually pulling the sections apart so new bone grows in the gaps. It\u2019s also why the demographic hungry for experimental treatments skews so young. The teenagers I spoke with felt like it was potentially their last chance to intervene.<\/p>\n \n\tFor James, a 17-year-old on the West Coast who asks that I use only his first name, an X-ray helped set off his search for something that could make him taller. During our Zoom call, he holds up a translucent plastic container where he keeps the powder he identifies as erda. Then he brings his hand toward the webcam, curling his fingers to show me his fingernails. They\u2019re yellowish and oozing pus. He says they\u2019ve been falling off. \u201cBro, it\u2019s bad.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI just thought I was just going to be a late bloomer because my uncles and dad, they grew very late,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I got a bone-scan X-ray and yo, the doctor said I have a bone age of 18. I can maybe grow another millimeter. And I was five foot five, so it was pretty bad. So then I just knew that there had to be something that could make me taller.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe says he began taking erda in late August and grew roughly two and a half to three inches in two months, while also using other drugs. \u201cI grew more in two months than I did in one year,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n\tErda wasn\u2019t the first drug James had considered. Doctors already prescribe growth hormone to help some children gain height, supplying a hormone the body naturally produces. Andrew Dauber, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children\u2019s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., says there\u2019s a distinction between treating a hormone deficiency and intervening because a child is just short.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere are children who are deficient in growth hormone, who have severe growth issues, who really medically need growth hormone as indicated. And then there\u2019s this gray zone of using growth hormone for short stature,\u201d he says. The FDA also approves it for some children whose short stature has no identified cause, a category called idiopathic short stature. Dauber describes the threshold as \u201ca height below minus 2.25 standard deviations.\u201d This translates to an adult male height of five feet three and an adult female of four feet 11.<\/p>\n \n\tThough guidelines are set by the FDA, doctors have the option of prescribing growth hormone off-label for individuals who they think could benefit from it. The decision involves an expensive treatment with risks, Dauber says, and doctors disagree about when it is warranted.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019ve spoken to a lot of pediatric endocrinologists, and some say, \u2018Listen, I know they\u2019re going to get it. They\u2019re either going to get it off the internet or they\u2019re going to go see a doctor who doesn\u2019t know as much about it, and I feel like I should just give it to them and at least monitor them for safety and do it in a safer way,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then there are many endocrinologists who feel like this is not really a disease or not really a medical problem.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDauber says he has now received his first patient inquiry about erda. He will not prescribe it for growth. \u201cThat\u2019s way too dangerous. We only know about it at the chemotherapeutic doses,\u201d he says, referring to the amounts used to treat cancer.<\/p>\n \t\tWhatever It Takes\u00a0\t<\/p>\n \n\tJames says that when he was younger, his parents refused to let him take growth hormone. After an endocrinologist told him he was nearly done growing at five foot five, he says, their guilt over that decision made them more permissive about his experiments with erda and other drugs. \u201cThey kind of let me do everything,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n\tZak says his parents \u201cdon\u2019t approve of anything I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBoth say that nothing would stop them from trying anything they can to get taller. \u201cThere\u2019s this life that I have in mind, and I just want it so badly that I\u2019m not going to let some risk stop me from getting the life I want,\u201d James says. \u201cI don\u2019t know. I just want it so badly.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s been a marked turn toward DIY healthcare in recent years, as alternative medicine and biohacking protocols gain mainstream popularity. People on social media increasingly promote injectable peptides<\/a> and other invasive methods for optimizing one\u2019s health and looks. For Zak, the adverse reactions have become part of that pursuit. \u201cIf I get into side effects, nobody would want to touch this compound,\u201d he says. \u201cBut to me, I get obsessed over this stuff, and I still think it was worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tJames calls his bedroom a lab. He says he sources the drugs through black-market online suppliers. In addition to erda and human growth hormone, he says he\u2019s experimented with tamoxifen and letrozole<\/a>, two drugs used to treat breast cancer, and abaloparatide<\/a>, a drug for osteoporosis. He also uses experimental compounds called SAG 21K<\/a> and KY19382<\/a>, which researchers have studied in mice for their effects on bone repair or growth.<\/p>\n \n\tHe says he went to the hospital with a stomach bleed during his first month of taking erda, though he isn\u2019t sure which exact compound caused it. He has since switched to online school because he says the pain and vomiting made attending in person too difficult. \u201cAt school, I threw up blood one time,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it hurt so bad to move. I can only go out once a week. I just go out on Fridays and just rest the whole day because everything I\u2019m doing, it makes me so tired and hungry that I literally just have to lay down.\u201d He says his bones feel like they\u2019re stretching apart. \u201cSo it\u2019s hard to do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\u2018Never Enough\u2019\t<\/p>\n \n\tThe anxiety around male height isn\u2019t exclusively coming from the teens themselves. Both Raimann and Dauber say they regularly see parents looking for ways to help their child reach a particular height, especially the parents of young boys. \u201cI had a mother say in front of her child, her teenage son, \u2018If he ends up five-seven, his life is over,\u2019\u201d Dauber recalls. \u201cMy eyes just shot open, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Well, think about the psychological effect that that has on your teenage child to say such a thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think there\u2019s an enormous social pressure, especially on young males, to become taller,\u201d Raimann says. He says some boys perceive the risk of remaining short as greater than the risk of taking experimental drugs.<\/p>\n \n\tZak explains why he feels he has to keep improving. \u201cI\u2019m trying to maximize every aspect of my body. No matter what I do, I still feel like it\u2019s not enough,\u201d he says. And when it comes to girls, he says, \u201cThey constantly want something better.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAcross social media, short men lament poor treatment romantically, pointing to research on the advantages taller men enjoy both professionally and in dating. On Reddit, communities like r\/short and r\/shortguys draw tens of thousands of members sharing their experiences. One user, who says he is a 21-year-old in Spain, tells me in a DM that reassuring stories about other short men did little to change his outlook.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPeople know how a short person is treated in this world; the problem is they try to turn a blind eye. They play dumb, saying things like, \u2018Well, but I know someone who \u2026\u2019 \u2014 purely anecdotal experiences that honestly don\u2019t reflect the reality for the majority.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\tne video led to another until eventually my TikTok feed was full of teenagers<\/a> trying to get taller. They were calling it \u201cheightmaxxing,\u201d a subset of the much-dissected world of \u201clooksmaxxing<\/a>,\u201d where young men trade strategies for improving their appearance in hopes of warding off a fate of despair and loneliness. For these young men, the logic is mercilessly efficient: Everything in life is better if you\u2019re tall.<\/p>\n