Explainer: when online fads take a dark turn, from planking to TikTok
It’s the call you dread to receive: your kids have been in a stunt that has gone wrong.
But now parents won’t just be fearing for their children’s safety, but the long arm of the law as well.
According to Donna Jones, the new chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, parents could be fined if their offspring take part in social media crazes that cause damage either to themselves or to property.
Last week, a “flash mob”, believed by Jones to have been organised via TikTok, on Oxford Street led to the mass looting of JD Sports by hundreds of young Londoners.
Another, even more sinister fad, involved TikTok influencers apparently encouraging people to see how long they can wind up in hospital if they overdose on paracetamol.
Jones told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that it is up to parents to intervene and steer them away from acts she saw as a symptom of “societal breakdown”.
TikTok insist it has nothing to do with their platform.
Of course, even if TikTok is new, teenagers and young Brits testing the limits by copying daring acts they see on the internet is not new.
In 2014, a number of young Britons died after taking part in the “neck nominate” challenge, which involved drinking a huge quantum of alcohol in a very short space of time. One man died days after drinking two pints of gin in one go.
The drinking game was believed to have originated in Australia before spreading to the UK.
Another bizarre, but less dangerous trend, was known as “planking”, where people would lie down in strange spots like a plank of wood, often balancing between two things. It also claimed a life, after a 20-year-old man attempted the challenge on a seventh floor balcony in Brisbane, Australia, where he then fell to his death. The roots can be traced back to a high school baseball game in the US state of Washington in 1984, but was given new life after two friends in Taunton, England, started the “lying down game”.