World enews: TikTok begs school children to stop partaking in criminal ‘devious lick’ trend

TikTok has banned content related to the viral “devious lick” trend, in which students in the US posted videos of items they allegedly stole from their schools.

Just a few weeks into the school year, students who fell for this trend have put up videos of stealing paper towel dispensers, soap, school furniture, SMART boards, laptops, “wet floor” signs, microscopes and even hand sanitiser dispensers.

Most of these videos are captioned with words such as “absolute sinister lick” or “hit the most despicable lick”.

Worried by the criminal turn taken by this trend, TikTok urged students to stop stealing school equipment.

“We expect our community to stay safe and create responsibly, and we do not allow content that promotes or enables criminal activities,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “We are removing this content and redirecting hashtags and search results to our Community Guidelines to discourage such behaviour.”

The social media company has removed the hashtag #deviouslick and its spelling variants such as #deviouslicks. Searching for these terms leads the user to a page that indicates that the phrase may have content that violates TikTok’s community guidelines.

The thefts have prompted schools in the US to warn students and parents that they could face legal action for such crimes, according to the Insider.

The trend captured the attention of students and other TikTok users early this month. The audio related to the challenge has been used nearly 110,000 times. Millions of likes and views have poured in for the videos shared under the viral trend.

According to an Urban Dictionary entry from January, “lick” is defined as a “successful type of theft which results in an acceptable, impressive and rewarding payday”.

“Devious lick” is not the only trend to have taken a worrying turn recently.

Dangerous trends such as the blackout challenge, an asphyxiation dare, the dry scoop challenge (a person eats a dry scoop of pre-workout powder without diluting it with water) and the milk crate challenge have caused injuries and even deaths.