By Ava Withem
This digital app known as TikTok has taken over the world. We see younger to older people on it all the time. Through TikTok you can meet new people, do fun dances and maybe learn a couple things. You can keep up with all the new trends, but is that always a good thing?
One of the newest trends on TikTok is influencing students and kids to destroy school property. The teenagers are calling it “hitting devious licks’’ which insists on stealing things from teachers’ classrooms, school bathrooms, from outside of the school etc. The teenagers are taking videos of them with the destroyed school property and posting it to TikTok for a little bit of fame.
On September 15th 2021, TikTok posted a tweet discussing the trend. The tweet pretty much says that any video they find or gets reported doing the “devious licks” will be taken down. As of right now when you look up devious licks on the app, nothing will show up because TikTok took down the hashtag. They are trying to discourage the behavior within the schools.
Schools around the world spend on average $110 billion on building maintenance, construction and operations and stealing or damaging school property, they have to spend even more money on repairing the damages. That money could take out of the funding you get for the fun school activities such as dances, games, and some of the academic funding. So before participating in the “funny” trend, stop to think about the things that you could be taking away for your fellow students. With the pandemic schools have been tight on money and their spending budgets (especially smaller schools with low funding programs). Keeping the school a clean and safe environment can be difficult with students stealing soap dispensers.
Participating in this TikTok trend at your school could lead to getting in school suspensions, getting the law involved because it is considered vandalism, and you can get out of school suspension. Not only does suspension set you back in school, it also causes problems in the future such as getting into colleges. Getting the law involved can get you community service and you’d possibly have to go to court.
This trend is really unnecessary and really uncalled for. It disappoints your teachers, principle, peers and your supervisors who all have to use or pay for all of these supplies that students are stealing or damaging. A moment of notoriety is not worth the price you may pay in the long term. Is your fifteen minutes of fame really worth it in the long run?
