Teachers in Central New York Fearful of a New TikTok Challenge

TikTok is a social media platform that can be quite entertaining, but people have now used it as a platform to go to extremes and do dastardly deeds. My cousin, who is a local teacher, expressed her concern the other day about the newest stupid challenge making its way through TikTok feeds across the country.

My cousin tells me she's gone from worrying about students taking their smart phones into the bathroom and destroying soap dispensers or toilet to now worrying about her personal safety. She literally is scared about someone in her 6th grade class coming up to her and slapping her, while filming it. This concern stems from the brand new "Slap a Teacher" TikTok challenge and proves how ludicrous and dangerous these challenges are becoming and each one tries to top the last.

We have seen stupidity in the form of the Tide Pods challenge and even further back the cinnamon challenge. For those who don't remember those challenges, the 'Tide Pods' one dared the individual to literally eat a Tide Pod. Take a plastic pod with toxic detergent inside. The cinnamon challenge encouraged the social media user to eat a spoonful of cinnamon, which is not pleasant. At least these examples of stupidity would only harm the person being "challenged." These newer challenges are dangerous and detrimental to other people and other people or property. It's unacceptable.

I know that as a person who does not have children I have to be careful with what I am about to say, but there has to be some intervention with these social media platforms and an abundance of supervision. While I still believe there are still good uses for social media, some really negative aspects of it have been revealed. With the news that broke over the weekend on the whistleblower and Facebook, it shows negativity sells and for some reason these dangerous and serious challenges are gaining popularity. It has to end. I really hope a local teacher doesn't have to deal with the ridiculous and stupid "slap a teacher."

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