By Karen Garcia
Los Angeles Times
LONG BEACH, Calif. — A Long Beach student was arrested on suspicion of participating in a nationwide social media challenge that encourages students to jam lead or metal into the ports of their Chromebook laptop computers.
The “Chromebook challenge” is a viral TikTok trend in which students short-circuit their school-issued Chromebook computers, causing sparks, smoke and, in some cases, a fire.
Videos on TikTok show students jamming paperclips, pencils or the lead from mechanical pencils into USB ports.
On Thursday, a 13-year-old student was arrested in connection with an arson incident that occurred inside a classroom at Perry Lindsey Academy, according to the Long Beach Police Departmen .
No injuries were reported.
The student inserted a foreign object into a battery charging port, damaging a Chromebook, according to the Long Beach Unified School District.
The school district declined to say if the student would be held responsible for the damage to the computer.
This isn’t the first time a student has been disciplined in connection with damaging a Chromebook for the sake of this social media challenge, but the district did not specify how many other times it had occurred.
The district is urging parents and caregivers to speak with their students about the dangers of participating in social media challenges.
“Inserting objects into charging ports is unsafe and can lead to significant disciplinary action and legal consequences,” the district said in a statement. “We ask families to continue reinforcing responsible digital behavior at home and to remind students: If you see something, say something.”
In a Northern California middle school, a student participated in the challenge by making her Chromebook smoke. The teacher discharged a fire extinguisher on the smoking computer and evacuated the classroom.
Incidents of smoking Chromebooks have been reported by school districts in Connecticut , Colorado , New Jersey , Pennsylvania and New Hampshire .
In Connecticut , the superintendent of Newington Public Schools , Maureen Brummet , said Chromebooks are expensive and are going up in price, “so when a student does intentionally destroy a Chromebook, it’s their responsibility to replace it,” NBC reported.
A local fire marshal, who responded to a school in Connecticut that was filled with smoke from a damaged Chromebook, told NBC that the batteries in the computers produce toxic smoke when they catch fire.
Videos of the challenge were previously found on TikTok by searching #ChromebookChallenge, but that tag has been taken down by the app. Instead, TikTok users will find the title “Your safety matters” and a message that reads: “Some online challenges can be dangerous, disturbing or even fabricated.”
Users are invited to click on a “view resources button” to help them identify whether a challenge viewed on the app is harmful.
Dangerous social media challenges have been occurring for years, including the 2016 “Cinnamon Challenge” — inhaling a spoonful of cinnamon — or the 2018 “Tide Pod Challenge,” which encouraged social media users to swallow soap-filled laundry pods for likes and follows.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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