When someone steals your heart, that’s love. When someone steals your thunder, that’s envy. But when someone steals your urinal, that’s devious. It’s a devious lick. You’ve been got.
A wildly popular prank has spawned on TikTok. The goal is essentially to vandalize your school without getting caught. Steal the fire extinguisher in the 200s wing. Bust open the soap dispensers in the men’s bathroom. It’s the typical riffraff that you’d expect from a bunch of teenagers, but more coordinated, and more destructive.
So is something like drawing on your desk in class devious? Not necessarily. Generally, a lick involves destroying, stealing, or dismembering school property in such a way that it actively frustrates and bewilders faculty.
So how do you respond? Do you get up on the podium and politely demand that the licking stop? Everyone, please stop licking me!
Well, that could create problems. In calling attention to the problem, you accept that it exists, thus inviting the perpetrators to cause more problems. It’s an effect criminologists have dubbed the “broken windows theory.” In an environment where crime is pervasive, individuals subconsciously believe that unlawfulness is acceptable. After all, if they didn’t catch the last guy, they’re probably not going to catch me!
Some schools have taken to suspending, expelling, and even arresting students, depending on the severity of the act. Recently, TikTok banned the trend entirely. If you search for “devious licks” on the app, you’ll see “no results found.” The prank has thus slowed down nationwide, but vandalism of school property still persists.
So far, the district has not made a statement on the trend. In order to probe further into the dilemma, we sampled the perspectives of students in Briarcliff Middle School and Mountain Lakes High School principal Mr. Mangili.
Briarcliff students gave us the scoop on what happened at the school last month: ketchup packets on bathroom radiators, Kool-Aid powder on the toilets, and—although the truth of this one is disputed—mangled wires in a metal panel on the wall. And last month’s incidents have certainly started a noticeable commotion.
After the toilet seats took on a red hue and the radiator choked on radioactive ketchup, Briarcliff principal Mr. Carlson notified the seventh grade—the grade of the perpetrator (and likely perpetrators) of the incidents. Through the grapevine, parents soon learned about what had transpired. According to the students we interviewed, Briarcliff issued suspensions and other statements of discipline following the incidents.
While the two students we interviewed disagree on whether last month’s vandalism was directly inspired by the Tiktok trend, they both addressed the possibility that because middle schoolers’ moral compasses and perceptions of humor are still developing, they devise pranks that eventually go off the deep end. But what motivates this kind of behavior? Could Tiktok perhaps truly be an influence in younger students’ social circles?
Or perhaps a year of virtual learning has just distorted childrens’ perceptions of what is socially acceptable, as suggested by Mr. Mangili in our interview. The principal expressed that high school students shouldn’t want to actively harm their building, and that the behavior which caused Briarcliff’s vandalism is not expected of more mature Mountain Lakes High School students. Nevertheless, there still have been instances of “licks” in the high school—a toilet paper dispenser in the 600s wing was dismantled and stolen.
Mr. Mangili made it clear that the administration would have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior. Police would be called in, and disciplinary action as well as mandates for monetary compensation would be enforced. Although this kind of punishment is intended to firmly establish the school’s intolerance for mischief, Mr. Mangili also communicated that his objective is not to shine a light on instances of vandalism, unless they directly involve the security of Mountain Lakes High School students. The “broken windows theory” may very well apply to Mountain Lakes High School, too.
Instead, Mr. Mangili hopes to create an atmosphere of support in the high school that helps parents talk to their children about social media use.
It is not the high school, but parents who should be regulating social media. With new social media apps and trends being churned out faster than non-Gen Z individuals can comprehend, the best that Mountain Lakes High School can do is educate teachers and parents about what students are doing and the potential dangers of social media.
Mr. Mangili, Mountain Lakes High School Principal (paraphrased)
So where will Briarcliff and Mountain Lakes High School go in the future with their relationships to their students and social media usage? For now, we can only hope that Mountain Lakes’s students are mature enough to keep each other accountable to taking care of our buildings. One thing’s for sure: “Devious Licks” is gone, but social media is here to stay. The question of what its place is in our society may not be for schools to answer directly, but it is clear that schools will have to make space for social media in their policies and rulebooks in order to adapt to a new age of online virality.
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