Students are short-circuiting their Chromebooks for a social media challenge

Across the country, students are short-circuiting their laptops at school in a new and sometimes dangerous social media trend.

The “Chromebook challenge” involves students jamming objects into their laptops until they spark and smolder. Students then record the smoking laptops and share the footage on TikTok and Instagram, sometimes set to music, as viewers react with heart and thumbs-up emojis.

It’s not just the expensive computers that get damaged: Floors and desks are scorched. Lessons are interrupted. Classrooms are evacuated. Fire and police departments are summoned. And some students have been suspended or even faced criminal charges, as schools work to stop the trend.

The “Chromebook challenge” involves using objects such as push pins, staples, paper clips, metallic gum wrappers and graphite, found in pencil lead. They are inserted into USB or charging ports, under keyboard keys, or near the batteries to deliberately short-circuit the devices.

Sometimes the batteries are smashed to facilitate the reaction. Students from elementary through high school have been reported doing it.

Scott Loehr, the superintendent for the Center Joint Unified School District in Roseville, California, said that on May 7, a middle school student inserted a sharp metal object into his laptop’s keyboard, causing it to smoke. His teacher evacuated the classroom and doused the device with a fire extinguisher.

“What we learned was the idea did come from TikTok or from this challenge,” Loehr said. Now, a search on TikTok for videos of the challenge brings up a safety message about online challenges that “can be dangerous.”

TikTok said in a statement that it removes content that violates its policy on dangerous activities and challenges and is redirecting search terms and hashtags. Instagram did not reply to a request for comment.

School districts in Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Arizona, Virginia, Colorado, Minnesota, California and Nevada and other states have sent letters to families, pleading with them to intervene. Some have suspended students and imposed fines of hundreds of dollars for damage to property and to the school-issued Chromebooks.

Some districts are also calling the police or excluding offenders from technology privileges on school grounds.

In the Boulder Valley School District, which has more than 28,000 students, the first sign that something was amiss came May 2, when a column of white smoke spewed from a Chromebook during an advisory period in a band room at Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colorado. The device was moved into a hallway, where it melted the floor.