‘Devious licks’ TikTok trend prompts wave of student thefts in US schools
- Children are posting videos of themselves vandalising school property and stealing soap dispensers or turf from fields as the social media challenge goes viral
- Some schools shut their bathrooms, where much of the damage is occurring, but students just tried to steal the ‘closed’ signs instead
Children across the US are posting TikTok videos of themselves vandalising school bathrooms and stealing soap dispensers and even turf from football fields, bedevilling school administrators seeking to contain the viral internet trend.
The “devious licks” challenge that swept social media this week is plaguing principals and school district administrators who already must navigate a bitter debate over requiring masks to keep Covid-19 in check. Some schools have had to more closely monitor or even shut down bathrooms, where much of the damage is occurring.
No section of the nation appears to have been untouched. In northeast Kansas, Lawrence High School had to close several bathrooms after students pried soap dispensers off the walls. Then, students tried to steal the “closed” signs, so staff is guarding the bathrooms, even the closed ones, said 17-year-old student Cuyler Dunn, relaying on Friday what he called “total destruction”.
“Some of them were to the point where they were borderline unusable,” said Dunn, who is also the co-editor-in-chief of Lawrence High’s student newspaper. “Locks on stalls had been taken off.”
While social media did spawn the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise money for research into the condition known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, it also led to a rash of poisonings several years ago when teenagers swallowed pods of laundry detergent for the “Tide Pods challenge”. The latest trend follows close upon a viral challenge to walk on stacks of milk crates.