Social media trend causing chaos on campuses across Florida – WPLG Local 10

A social media trend is causing chaos at schools across Florida. The challenge on TikTok called “Devious Licks” calls for students to steal, make a mess and post it on social media, to get them more views.

On Thursday, Miami-Dade Public Schools said they were investigating a small number of incidents to determine if they are linked to this trend.

In the case of Gulf Coast High School in Collier County, students recorded themselves ripping out sinks from the walls, taking lockers from the school and even stealing toilets from the bathroom.

“You see kids doing it all the time too like if a teacher turns their back like they’ll steal a clock or something. It just gets you like a lot of likes on TikTok, like all the videos are blowing up and it’s pretty crazy,” said Annette Hernandez, a student at Gulf Coast High School.

Hernandez said most of the bathrooms at her school in Naples were closed Tuesday, because of the trend. In one instance, a faucet was ripped out of the wall, spilling water everywhere and flooding the whole bathroom.

In Seminole County, a toilet was removed and placed in the middle of the bathroom.

“Currently we’ve seen an incident at about all of our schools, so we have 12 middle schools and nine high schools, so every one of them has pretty much seen it,” said Michael Lawrence, Communications Officer for Seminole County Public Schools

Lawrence says it’s a problem that is costing the schools thousands of dollars.

Near a middle school campus in Collier County, a Dunkin Donuts shut down its dining room because of the incidents. Posting a note saying “We can no longer control the young students after school that destroy our restaurant and have no manners.”

As for public schools in Miami-Dade County, school police officers said, “they are urging parents to speak to their children about the importance of respecting school property and acting responsibly on social media. Destructive behavior will result in serious consequences, up to and including expulsion and arrest. Having a felony record is not worth the price of gaining social media attention.”

Social platform profits cannot outweigh social responsibility norms. The questions we should be asking are why would @tiktok_us allow those posts to begin with and why were they not detected and removed before? @MDCPS will not tolerate such acts. https://t.co/CMCd6hTBdo @nbcnews

— Alberto M. Carvalho (@MiamiSup) September 16, 2021

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