A dangerous viral trend has been going around TikTok where kids try to make their Chromebooks start smoking by putting foreign metallic objects in their ports. These items include pins, paperclips, staples, and scissors, among others, which are all readily available around the classroom. According to Ars Technica, many school districts have quickly taken action, with those in Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington sending written warnings to parents about the risky challenge.
There have been multiple reports of students trying the challenge, which sometimes results in their laptop smoking or catching fire. And because there’s a high risk of explosion with damaged lithium batteries, these incidents resulted in classroom evacuations, class cancellations, and, in some cases, deployment of firefighters or other first responders. One incident had a student sticking a pair of scissors into a laptop, causing it to release a lot of toxic smoke. This led to one student being sent to the hospital for inhalation, while the offender is now facing charges in juvenile court.
This isn’t the first time a dangerous viral trend has started circulating on popular social media. We’ve seen several “challenges” in the previous years, including the Kia Challenge, which showed how easy it was to steal certain Kia and Hyundai model years and led to a rise in car thefts just for clout on TikTok.
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There was also the Blackout Challenge, where kids would strangle themselves on live video until they passed out, which, unfortunately, has led to several accidental deaths. Finally, there was the Penny or Outlet Challenge in early 2020, where those trying it would insert a plug into a power outlet and then slide a penny onto the exposed prongs, leading to short circuits.
TikTok reacted quickly when the news started going viral and shut down the challenge. We got no results when we searched for Chromebook Challenge on the social media platform. Instead, we got this warning: “This phrase may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines. Promoting a safe and positive experience is TikTok’s top priority. For more information, we invite you to review our Community Guidelines.”
We did get some results when we searched for Chromebook durability, which showed some people purposefully throwing their laptops against hard surfaces or bending them to see how long they would last. We even saw one clip of a person scratching the laptop’s port with a metal pin, but none showed a Chromebook smoking or catching fire.
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