When you enter school, you expect to see everything hung up and looking nice, clean and overall a good place to be. However today, when you enter school you would see stuff that should be there,it’s either damaged, missing, or destroyed. How did this all happen?

Recently a trend started going around Tik Tok called the Devious Licks. Lick can mean a ton of different things, but on Tik Tok, “lick” means stolen. So the Devious Licks is when students steal things from their school and secretly hide it in their backpacks. According to Disactrify, the trend started this month when a user on Tik Tok who goes by @dtx.2cent, posted a video of himself pulling a hand sanitizer dispenser out of a backpack, with the caption “only a month into school and I already got a devious lick,” on the screen. The video got a total of 2.5 million likes with 36.7K comments, and is top liked on their account. From there people began to steal things from school and stuff it in their backpacks. 

Because I have a Tik Tok account, I decided to go check out the trend myself, and see what all the buzz and word was about. When I typed in “Devious Licks” into the search bar, I was immediately disgusted by the amount of people who are willing to destroy school property and steal things from a school, just for likes and views on a social media account. As students, people just need to take the time and realize that we don’t own half  the stuff at the school, it is provided to us by the school and district itself, and we have to take care of as we have to treat other people’s property the way we want our propert and stuff to be treated.

Lots of people decided to take part in this trend, but others like myself, are encouraging people to not do it. Doing it is still considered stealing and you could get fined, suspended or worse, for stealing. Even if you think you would still get away with it as it’s being done on school property, it still doesn’t matter. You are still stealing, you are still committing a crime, and you will pay the price. Is posting a video on Tik Tok of you stealing a soap dispenser worth either ruining school experiances for others or suffering the consequences?

When I walk through my school, I don’t see a really nice school. I see certain things missing as students have been taking or destroying things from the school as the result of a Tik Tok trend. The bathrooms upstairs had their equipment either destroyed or missing, so there now has to be paper signs so students know which bathrooms had working soap dispensers. It started to get to the point where some students will have to go to the bathrooms across the other side of campus as many bathrooms have been rendered unuseable due to people trashing them for a Tik Tok video, which can be a great inconvience for students, and they shouldn’t have to feel like that because of other student’s decisions.

Not only is it happening at schools, but it’s also happening at other random places as well. According to PopBuzz, it has gotten to the point in which people have started stealing other random items from other places than just schools. It’s ridiculous to think that people would just do stupid things like stealing just for the amusment and likes on Tik Tok when it’s not their property, it’s someone elses. Like with the schools for example. We don’t own anything that is at the school, all that is paid for and provided by the school, and the fact that people are taking and stealing things that are provided by the school and paid for just for a social media video, doesn’t make me happy.

Currently, many schools and districts have figured out what their students have been up to and have been doing everything they can to shut it down.  According to KSTAT,  at North East Independent School District in San Antonio, TX, many of the high school staff members who have been dealing with their student’s vandalism, are now taking measures in their own hands, by identifying who is  taking part in vandelsing, and have them facing serious consequences, not only in school but financially as well . My school has also been noticing the problem and started to establish it by having sheets in front of the bathrooms, telling students not to vandalize the bathrooms, with a  code on the sheet where you can anonymously report vandalism if you see any. It makes me so happy that not only is the staff and teachers realising what’s going on, but that also students know what they should do if they see any case of vandalism. I feel like some students are too nervous to say what’s happening as they don’t want to get in trouble, so it’s awesome that we get to anonymously report, so nobody knows who told the teachers.

Even though there are so many trends going around via Tik Tok, I don’t think that this trend is very good. Not only is it being posted online where pretty much everyone can see it and it could get traced back to you, but there is also potential for arrests due to the crimes that are being committed. I think this trend is very risky and should be shut down. Some people like this trend, but others don’t. I am one of the people who believe that the trend should be shut down, as it is encouraging students and people to do something risky and insane behavior that’ll affect them negatively in the future. If you want to do this and plan on doing it, just remember: if you get caught stealing something from school or somewhere else, you will probably get fined, sued even, and will probably end up in jail.  So be prepared to face the consequences and remember who you are affecting with your decisions.