A group of students at Lincoln Middle School were recently disciplined for throwing spit wads on the ceiling and other surfaces inside a school bathroom after a video of the culprits in the act was recorded and posted on TikTok.
The rise in popularity of TikTok, a social media platform focused on sharing short videos, has sometimes created unique challenges for schools dealing with acts of vandalism and delinquency among students.
“We’ve had probably three different trends during the course of the year,” Joe Hamel, an assistant principal at Lincoln, said.
The first TikTok-related trend Hamel noticed at the school, and in many ways the largest, was connected to the “Devious Licks” TikTok challenge which gained national attention last September.
The challenge started when TikTok users began posting videos of themselves with items they’d stolen from their schools. While TikTok itself spoke out against the challenge after a few weeks and banned content related to it, the trend still caused significant damage to schools around the nation, including in Green River.
“One of those challenges was to vandalize bathrooms,” Hamel said, explaining one idea was for kids to take soap dispensers off the wall. “In our case, we probably had three or four of those that happened. But then the big thing for us was people opened up the soap dispenser and just took the soap out. So we probably had 25 or 30 of those at the beginning of the year. We did catch five or six kids at that point in time. They were all disciplined.”
The second trend Hamel saw happening at Lincoln involved TikTok being used as a platform for cyber bullying.
“We had kids making memes and posting inappropriate stuff directed at other kids,” Hamel said.
While one of the kids involved with the bullying content was caught, Hamel said TikTok’s privacy rules made it difficult to identify the culprits, which was “a royal pain.”
The third trend was the recent spit wad incident. In this case the action itself was not necessarily inspired by or related to the social media platform, but the fact that it was posted on TikTok is one of the direct reason the students involved were caught.
“Sometimes you record yourselves doing things you probably shouldn’t be doing and then you post it in various places,” Hamel said. “So those people were caught and disciplined.”
Similar incidents have occurred throughout the school year, Hamel explained, such as students vaping and posting videos of themselves to social media.
Many of these TikTok-related trends have caused damage at Lincoln. Hamel said the school was able to identify most of the culprits who participated in the TikTok challenge in September and so was able to get back some of the stolen property. However, two or three dispensers were damaged and needed to be replaced, and they cost about $150 each, according to Hamel.
When it came to the spit wads, not much damage was done since the culprits were caught quickly and the spits wads were able to be removed while they were still wet. However, that meant someone had the gross job of cleaning everything up, Hamel pointed out.
As far as the cyber bullying is concerned, Hamel believes it may have caused some of the worst damage.
“When people are harassing other people, that’s not damaging to physical property at the school, but it’s damaging the self esteem of others and that sort of thing, which is probably more detrimental than the damage itself to the school,” he said.
While Lincoln has been dealing with these sorts of incidents all year, Hamel knows it’s not the only local school to feel the impact of TikTok challenges.
“The high school went through the exact same experiences that we did,” Hamel said, pointing out both the Green River and Rock Springs high schools dealt with similar incidents.
The Rock Springs Police Department issued a press release in September stating: “The Rock Springs Police Department has been investigating several vandalisms to schools that have been directly related to a recent social media trend from TikTok. The vandalisms incited by the trend caused several thousands of dollars worth of damage to the Sweetwater School District No. 1 buildings and greatly disrupted the learning environment for students.”
The RSPD press release also warned about upcoming TikTok challenges through July 2022 and informed parents many of the challenges are crimes.
In March, the RSPD issued another press release related to the TikTok “Gel Blaster Challenge.” The press release said officers had responded to multiple calls regarding gel beads being shot at individuals and vehicles, and reminded the public “use of these and other similar weapons within city limits is a violation of Rock Springs City Ordinance 3-311, Discharging Firearms, and is a must appear citation with a maximum fine of $410.”
When it comes to the impact of TikTok and other social media platforms on schools, Hamel admitted kids have always gotten into trouble and schools have always had to deal with vandalism and other acts of delinquency, and things like TikTok may not have made these incidents happen more often, but they have had an impact.
“It’s just weird that the ideas come from some social media platform instead of kids thinking up these things on their own,” Hamel said.
Just like TikTok hasn’t necessarily made kids act out more, it also hasn’t necessarily led to kids being caught more often, but it has sometimes given school staff a place to start in looking for culprits a little easier and more quickly, according to Hamel.
“Fortunately we were able to catch a few kids,” Hamel said, thinking about some of the incidents throughout the year. “Once you catch a few then it kind of deters others when they start to see what the consequences are.”
One thing Hamel has noticed is sometimes kids who get involved in these types of incidents are kids who have never been in trouble before.
“I think they get caught up in the moment,” Hamel said. “They think ‘hey, this would be fun, let me try that,’ and then all of a sudden they don’t think about the consequences on the other end until after they’ve done it.”
Thinking about the consequences of their actions is a message Hamel tries to convey to kids on a regular basis. He said he frequently tells them “As you get older, you get to choose your behaviors, but somebody else is going to choose the consequences that go along with them. And so you need to be able to weigh that before you make that choice.”
Sharing a message of making good choices is one way Hamel thinks teachers, parents and the community can have an impact on trends like the ones Lincoln has recently experienced.
“I think if we had the whole community talking about that, and we had parents talking about that, and we had teachers talking about making good choices, we might have a better school year,” Hamel said.
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