Local news has invented another fake TikTok challenge
'Door kicking' is not a TikTok challenge and the irresponsible coverage shows that the news media still doesn’t understand the app’s most basic functionality.
Local news media across the country is promoting yet another non-existent TikTok challenge as a ban on the app looms.
“There’s a TikTok challenge right now, where instead of ding dong ditch, you ding dong kick the door as hard as you can,” claimed Lola Kelly, a Florida resident.
The "door-kicking challenge," according to news outlets across the country, is a TikTok challenge where “individuals kick at doors of homes and businesses for social media fame.” How kicking someone’s door achieves “social media fame” is never explained, of course.
Takoma Park police in Maryland and a slew of news stations have issued warnings about the “door kicking” challenge, sparking outrage and meltdowns in parent groups and yet another moral panic over a “challenge” that flat out does not exist on TikTok. This panic has been stoked by national outlets like the New York Post and Parents.com. Members of local parents groups are arguing that the alleged challenge shows why the app must be banned.
“With the rise of TikTok as a predominant influence in our children’s lives, it seems they are being tempted to take part in increasingly dangerous, and even illegal challenges,” a Parents.com article claims.
Kelly, the Florida resident who repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that TikTok was responsible for someone kicking on her door, said that she owns a gun and could have shot a kid. She then urged parents to talk to their children about TikTok and its danger, saying that “a child is going to get shot.” (It’s worth noting that Kelly never once saw who was kicking at her door, and there is no evidence that the perpetrator was even a young person.)
Not only is kicking on someone’s door not a TikTok challenge, but the tidal wave of irresponsible and inflammatory coverage shows that the majority of news media still doesn’t understand the app’s most basic functionality. TikTok is a short form social media app, it does not “issue challenges.” There is also no social media clout associated with kicking on someone’s door.
Not a single news article on this alleged challenge features actual TikTok videos. There is not a single trending hashtag or term associated with this challenge on TikTok, nor has a single TikTok influencer engaged in this alleged “challenge.”
This is a completely manufactured moral panic driven primarily by local news.
Every single video included in these news stories comes from a Ring camera or other home surveillance system. The people interviewed in nearly half a dozen local news segments all claim that kids have kicked at their door in order to achieve social media fame, but the Ring camera video footage in the news segments nearly all show a person kicking at a door alone. There are no phones shown in the videos and there are no secondary kids in the videos filming. In fact, it doesn’t appear that footage of these alleged door kicking incidents exists anywhere outside of Ring camera videos.
This is not the first time the media has pushed fake a social media challenge. After years of pushing fake YouTube challenges, in 2020, the news media turned its attention to TikTok.
Dozens of viral challenges have been falsely attributed to the app. In 2023, representatives in Congress bombarded TikTok’s CEO with questions about nonexistent TikTok challenges, repeating false information gleaned from news stories.
In 2022, my former colleague Drew Harwell and I broke the story that Meta even hired a well known Republican comms firm to smear TikTok in local news across the country by planting false stories about fake TikTok challenges, some of which were actual trends that began on Facebook.
While it may seem trivial, sensationalized media coverage of nonexistent social media “challenges” isn’t harmless. False news stories are weaponized by powerful policymakers and lobbyists to justify sweeping legislation like the impending TikTok ban and other dangerous and restrictive social media laws like the (very poorly named) Kids Online Safety Act, that ultimately harm the very children they claim to protect.
These pieces of legislation, which are framed by the media as necessary to combat an imaginary epidemic of misbehavior, ignore the reality that social media platforms are crucial lifelines for young people and valuable sources of news and information. By pushing these moral panics, the media distracts from the things that actually harm children.
As I wrote back in 2018, all of these alleged “challenges” and trends follow the same formula: A local news station runs a piece overstating a dangerous “teen trend.” Concerned parents flock to the internet to spread the word. Actual teenagers and anyone else who uses these apps mocks them for their naïveté. Sometimes influencers hop on the trend, parodying it and exploiting it for their own gain. And trolls take advantage of those who believe it’s real, often by creating and posting content that seemingly confirms parents’ worst fears.
Parents have always felt out of touch with the generations below them, but smartphones have seemingly widened that gulf. Sixty percent of teens have created accounts for apps or social-media sites without their parents’ knowledge, according to a 2016 study by the National Cyber Security Alliance. And only 13 percent of teenagers believed their parents “understood the extent of their internet use.” That gap in understanding has allowed this very specific type of misinformation (especially about TikTok) to flourish.
Worried parents share these stories about hoax challenges across Facebook, forums, group chats, and parents groups. They beg the government to take extreme action.
The problem is that these stories are only ever a distraction. They offer false reassurance and an easy fix to the wrong problem. If you can protect your child from the latest “dangerous TikTok challenge,” the thinking goes, you can protect them from the real dangers of the internet.
Unfortunately, maintaining kids’ safety online and off is a much more complicated and delicate task. The internet is profoundly changing kids’ lives in ways that we have yet to understand, and it makes sense that parents want to keep their children safe. But made up TikTok challenges aren’t what they need protection from.
When news outlets cry wolf about fake challenges, it also undermines their credibility, especially with younger audiences. Reporters who don’t understand the basics of how an app like TikTok even operates, should not be writing stories about it.
Unfortunately, as long as newsrooms prioritize virality over the truth, the fake TikTok challenge epidemic will continue, the generational divide will deepen, and trust in the news media will be further undermined. Moral panic will flourish and the adults who panic-share these headlines will continue to create the conditions for even more dangerous and draconian legislation that strips young people of civil liberties and, ultimately, does nothing to meaningfully make the world more safe.
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Still my all-time favorite reported imaginary teenage trend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkem
Nothing else has ever come close. Also: nothing is new.