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<\/p>\nThe latest TikTok \u201cchallenge\u201d is causing so much chaos in school toilets that they\u2019re having to be closed.<\/p>\n
The destructive "Devious Licks" craze is spreading along the US West Coast, with schools around San Francisco being particularly hard hit.<\/p>\n
Kids are stealing cleaning equipment, and smearing soap and other substances on toilet walls in a bid to get a few mintues of social media fame.<\/p>\n
Dawnette Brenner, who works at one middle school in the area, told ABC News: \u201dThe kids are destroying the bathrooms, the soap dispensers, they're destroying stuff. <\/p>\n
"They're putting tissues and soap dispensers in the toilet\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Another teacher Paula Merrigan, says the vandals don\u2019t necessarily understand the damage they\u2019re causing.<\/p>\n
"I don't think a lot of them realise at the elementary school level that they are vandalising, they just think they're doing something funny because they saw it on TikTok."<\/p>\n
Emily Rosales, a student at Abbott Middle School in San Mateo, just south of San Francisco, adds that the toilets in her schools may have to be closed because of the vandalism.<\/p>\n
"My teachers keep saying they might close them because it's getting worse and worse so we might just have to go to the office if we need to go use the restroom\u201d.<\/p>\n
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A spokesperson from TikTok said that the offending videos would be removed from the platform.<\/p>\n
\u201dWe expect our community to stay safe and create responsibly, and we do not allow content that promotes or enables criminal activities," they said.<\/p>\n
"We are removing this content and redirecting hashtags and search results to our Community Guidelines to discourage such behaviour."<\/p>\n
Here in the UK, a TikTok craze encouraging kids to buy cans of beans and smear the contents over people's cars and houses has become enough of a problem to come to the attention of two police forces<\/p>\n
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PCSO Michelle Owens said: "If you work in a shop, please can you be aware of youths buying large quantities of cans of beans, if you have children living at home, please be mindful if you see them removing cans of beans from the family home."<\/p>\n
TikTok has been the spawning-ground for dozens of pointless and occasionally dangerous \u201cchallenges,\u201d such as the \u201cPenny Challenge\u201d which saw kids starting electrical fires by connecting a penny to a live mains socket and the \u201cSkullbreaker Challenge\u201d which encouraged impressionable TikTok users to try to injure their friends with a cruel trick.<\/p>\n
App users in the UK and US are spending more time on TikTok than on YouTube, a new report suggests.<\/p>\n