St Mark’s Anglican Community School warns parents about rumoured violent and costly TikTok challenges

A prominent northern suburbs private school has warned parents about a rumoured online “challenge” daring students to “smack a staff member” after an earlier challenge led to costly bathroom vandalism. In a letter sent to parents on Wednesday, St Mark’s Anglican Community School principal Steven Davies said the school had become aware of a list of challenges reportedly posted on the TikTok video-sharing app. “I do not have a TikTok account ... and would not usually take a lot of notice except that St Mark’s, and other schools around Perth, experienced a lot of damage to bathroom facilities over the past month or so, requiring significant and expensive repair,” he said. “The TikTok challenge issued for September was to ‘mess up a toilet/vandalise the restroom at school’. Unfortunately, we experienced this on multiple occasions at St Mark’s.” Given the damage caused to the school’s Hillarys campus, Mr Davies said he could not help but feel concerned about future challenges listed on social media “to smack a staff member on the backside, kiss your friend’s girlfriend at school, jab a breast, mess up school signs and make a mess in the courtyard or cafeteria”. Mr Davies urged parents to speak to their kids about the harm caused by such challenges and the risks of following instructions issued through social media. “Any such actions would be viewed very seriously at St Mark’s,” he said. “Someone subjected to this behaviour would rightly feel distressed and disrespected.” Schools in the US last month reported students were damaging school bathrooms for a TikTok challenge, and have also issued warnings to parents about the so-called “slap a teacher” craze. TikTok denied its platform was responsible for the latest challenge and said on Twitter “the rumoured slap a teacher dare is an insult to educators everywhere”. “While this is not a trend on TikTok, if at any point it shows up, content will be removed,” it said. According to fact-checking website Snopes, the slap a teacher dare cannot be traced back to TikTok. It said the rumour appeared to have originated from a list of alleged monthly TikTok challenges that had been posted widely on Facebook and circulated in news reports, but it was unclear where the list started. In a statement to Snopes, TikTok said it had not found “slap a teacher” related content on its platform, adding that “most people appear to be learning about the offline dare from sources other than TikTok”. The eSafety Commission has previously warned parents about the dangers of online challenges, urging them to report any videos of risky behaviour to the app or service where they were posted.