TikTok is a social media app that was created by a Chinese tech company named ByteDance in September of 2016 which at first went under the name Douyin. Douyin is a social media app exclusive to Chian that allows its users to make and share short videos with each other. Later on, in 2017, ByteDance acquired the rights to musical.ly which they went on to merge with Douyin to create TikTok. TikTok is very similar to Douyin and is built around the idea of its users being able to make and share their own videos with people anywhere in the world as long as they have TikTok downloaded. Which can end up being analyzed and studied to gain an idea of how people go about expressing themselves, interacting with one another, and how culture is created during the digital age. With the purchase of musical.ly ByteDance was able to launch TikTok internationally later that year with it receiving 132 million downloads during its first year. During 2020 however, during the lockdown due to Covid TikTok became the most downloaded app globally across both the iOS app store and Google Play store, where it was downloaded 850 million times which increased TikTok’s user base by over 75% in this year alone. These numbers only increase further throughout the years where in 2022 it was reported that TikTok was downloaded 879.2 million times with it being the most downloaded app that year. To further put into perspective how much TikTok is used globally and how many users it has, according to the article TikTok Statistics For Marketers In 2023: TikTok is used by 30.25% of the world’s 5.07 billion internet users. TikTok is used on a regular basis by 22.32% of the 4.9 billion active social media users While TikTok is able to provide a creative and entertaining outlet for its users to be able to express themselves and connect with others, there have been growing concerns about its potential negative effects on the youth. Such of these issues include mental health, body image issues, and exposure to dangerous content. One of the main defining features that TikTok is known for is its viral trends from dance challenges, lip-sync videos, to a-day-in-the-life videos and many more. These trends will end up quickly going viral not only across TikTok but areas outside of TikTok such as Twitter and Instagram which ends up allowing even more people to be able to see and interact with these videos. However, for every safe or innocent trend that exists there have been several dangerous ones that have been spread thanks to TikTok. One of these such challenges is devious licks, this was a trend that started back in late 2021 that consisted of people who were mostly teenagers stealing items from their school or other such institutions. Such items range from calculators and books to items such as laptops, a fire hydrant, and even one recorded instance of a school bus being stolen. In an interview conducted by PBS titled Viral ‘devious licks’ TikTok challenge encourages kids to steal from school students and teachers talk about the effect that the trend has had on them and the school: My classroom had pretty much been destroyed. There was like posters tore off the wall. The kids had taken books that I'd personally bought. And they took the books and they, like, took them, took a paper cutter, and, like, cut the covers and pages of the books Furthermore, some individuals even ended up stealing items such as face masks, hand sanitizer dispensers, and soap dispensers during this time which helped to lead to the surge in Covid-19 cases rising in September due to people being unable to gain access to these items to help them go about fighting Covid-19. Later on, in the challenge’s lifecycle, devious licks evolved to include destroying public restrooms as well as theft which could’ve further led to the rise since people were unable to use the bathrooms due to how badly they were damaged. To put into perspective how bad the damages were according to the new articles Round Rock ISD says ‘devious lick’ challenge will cost more than $15K, warns about future challenges: stink bombs in restrooms resulted in two schoolwide evacuations and mandatory gas line testing that cost the district $15,000…Additionally, across RRISD’s secondary schools, school leaders say more than 100 restroom soap and paper towel dispensers had to be replaced, and staff had to spend a “significant” amount of time cleaning and repairing vandalized items in restrooms When TikTok eventually stepped in to ban the trend, however when they did the damage has already been done with them banning the trend halfway through September meanwhile the trend first started on TikTok on September 1st. Moreover, people were able to circumvent this ban by slightly changing one letter on the hashtag which allowed for users to continue uploading the same videos to the site. T
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