A popular social media trend emerged on the Tik Tok app called ‘Devious Licks’. This trend consists of students taking and vandalizing things in their schools. The trend mostly affects the bathrooms, but students also steal things out of classrooms and community spaces. 

This is happening at Troy High as well, almost every bathroom has been affected by it. This has caused bathrooms to be shut down for a period of time during the school day. 

Considering that the student body itself are the ones destroying the bathrooms, it’s reasonable to wonder if some students are bothered by the trend. 

Senior Sebastian Chokka said, “I have seen soap dispensers and paper towel dispensers taken, people carrying dispensers and urinals broken. I have been late to pretty much all of my classes now because I’m just trying to go to the bathroom and I can’t find one”. 

Not only are students upset about this new trend, teachers are as well. Teacher Cheryl Rosenblatt has something to say about the devious licks trend.  

“Yes it bothers me that kids are destroying property,”. Rosenblatt said, “Their actions affect others because the bathrooms have been locked for all. Kids are doing these horrible actions because of the TikTok trends.” 

Troy High has Safe-Eds that work at our school to help ensure a safe learning environment for us, these people work closely with administration. Kelley Cillop, a Safe-Ed at Troy High, has seen her fair share of the TikTok trend and the destruction that it has brought.  

“I have not seen anything taken from the bathrooms but I have been handed things that have been taken from them. I do know that one of the fine arts hallway girls bathroom soap dispensers was taken off the wall, that was the one handed to me and so for one day that bathroom was shut down for certain times of the day”.  

It’s possible that there is a reason that students are acting out and being destructive. In an interview with The New York Times, Amanda Brennan, the senior director of trends for the digital marketing agency XX Artists, said the answer might be the pandemic. After more than a year of shutdowns and virtual schooling, students, who are now returning to schools for the first time, may just be looking for a way to rebel.

“It makes sense to see kids stealing things because it feels like a power play,” Brennan said. “You feel powerful over these systems that you may not have felt as if you had a lot of control over.” 

The possibility that the pandemic had an impact on the behaviors of students is a very strong argument, yet it does not excuse the fact that destruction of property is wrong. Ultimately, schools are the ones victimized by this trend. 

Destroying property hurts not only the Troy High student body, but it also affects the staff at this school. The staff here work very hard to create a safe and clean learning space for us. Cillop has thoughts about the people affected by this trend. 

”It’s kind of silly to be destructive to ruin someone else’s property because taxpayers pay for it students’ parents pay for it and there’s other fun things to do besides destroy property” 

In many ways, social media can bring people closer and create an environment to share and communicate, but sometimes it creates a bad trend that harms schools and communities.

It’s very possible that there is an end in sight to this trend and the destruction it has brought. According to NBC News, TikTok recently confirmed it has banned content around the ‘devious licks’ trend, in which students post videos of items they allegedly stole from their schools.

Even though the trend has been banned, it does not appear that it has been stopped. App users are finding creative hashtags ranging from #devious #lick to #deviouslick to get around the band hashtag. 

The ‘devious licks’ at Troy High have looked to slow down, so it’s possible students will start to respect their schools and stop this trend.