Social media trend leading to local students damaging school property

The “Devious Licks” challenge, and related videos, are being removed from the TikTok platform.

A new “challenge” on a popular social media platform is encouraging local students to vandalize their schools.

Known as the “Devious Lick” TikTok challenge, the Enumclaw School District has noted several incidents in recent days at all three secondary schools where students have caused minor property damage, mostly by emptying (or straight up stealing) soap dispensers.

“For the past few days we have seen an increase in vandalism in student bathrooms at the high school,” Public Information Officer Jessica McCartney wrote in a Sept. 13 email to parents. “As a result, we are closing some bathrooms and the high school and directing students to bathrooms adjacent to the commons as a means to better monitor our bathrooms. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope that this ‘challenge’ will quiet down soon.”

TikTok is a platform where users can upload short videos to share with friends and strangers online. It’s not unusual to come across various “challenges” posed by users of the app; many are simply meant to be silly and harmless, coming in the form of lip-syncing or dance challenges.

The “Devious Lick” challenge, though, is objectively not one of those. Though McCartney confirmed that most of the local mischief has been related to soap dispensers, other schools have reported classroom phones, fire exit signs, and even urinals have gone missing.

The challenge looks to have begun in early September when one user apparently stole (or “licked”) a box of disposable masks for public use. According to NJ.com, the short video garnered close to 346,000 views before it was removed from the platform, along with banning the user; TikTok has also said that it will remove all videos and related hashtags (like #devious) associated with the challenge.

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