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Slap a Teacher: From TikTok Hoax to Media-fueled Panic [1]

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Date: 2022-08 

Shortly after the LA Times and Washington Post fanned the flames of the “slap a teacher” challenge by suggesting TikTok had inspired recent assaults on teachers, Vice, Insider, and Snopes all published articles exploring the validity of such claims. Vice’s Oct. 6, 2021 investigation concluded that “there’s no evidence that the ‘Slap a Teacher’ challenge they’re all worried about even exists.” On the same day, Insider also debunked the challenge, concluding that it “was unable to find evidence of the "slap a teacher" challenge trending or widely circulating on TikTok,” and that the rumor was spread on Facebook. Snopes made similar conclusions, writing on Oct. 7, 2021: “As of this writing, we have not found evidence to support the claim that “slap a teacher” is in fact a viral or widespread trend on TikTok.”

The definitive debunk came on Oct. 28, 2021, when Gimlet Media published an investigative episode on its Reply All podcast that sought to establish the origins of the viral but dubious “slap a teacher” challenge. Gimlet was the first to identify Superintendent Villanueva and to interview Deputy Gomez, revealing that neither had confirmed the veracity of the list of challenges before sharing. In one case the school district even told Reply All that a slapping case at their school was actually unrelated to TikTok.

A TikTok spokesperson contacted by the podcast reported that they “hadn’t seen [the list]” but told Gimlet that the company had “policies against posts that coordinate harm or posts that promote or encourage dangerous viral challenges.” Facebook representatives told Gimlet media they had not seen the slap a teacher misinformation on their platform. The company did not respond after Gimlet media sent them screenshots of Facebook posts spreading the slap a teacher misinformation.

Deputy Gomez told Gimlet Media that both TikTok representatives and multiple law enforcement agencies had reached out to him about the challenge, treating him as an expert on the matter. Gomez defended his choice to publish the list: “I am totally fine erring on the side of just a possibility, there’s no way I can tell the future so if I can’t be sure of it, am I not going to put out warnings? No, I'm going to put out warnings.”

While Gimlet was able to thoroughly discredit the idea that “slap a teacher” existed on TikTok, its investigation was unable to explain why this particular example of misinformation spread so rapidly. Five months later, a Washington Post investigation by reporters Taylor Lorenz and Drew Harwell answered that question. In a March 30, 2022, article, The Post revealed that Meta (aka Facebook) had paid one of the largest Republican consulting firms in the US, Targeted Victory, to create a grassroots critical press campaign against TikTok in local media nationwide.

Internal communications published by The Post show that Meta sought to depict TikTok as harmful to American children while pushing for positive coverage for its own platforms. At the time, Facebook was losing daily users for the first time in its 18-year history; it attributed this loss to the popularity of TikTok. The Post article does not specify when the Targeted Victory campaign began, but does show that in September 2021 the PR firm pushed local media in Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Washington D.C. to write stories about the “devious licks” challenge.

A director at Targeted Victory wrote that the firm needs to “get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign-owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using,” revealed one email. In another, a director queried about local reporters who could serve as a “back channel” for anti-TikTok messaging. “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids.’”

In October 2021, a month after it promoted stories about “devious licks,” Targeted Victory pushed local media nationwide to report on “slap a teacher” rumors. The PR firm’s involvement is what transformed rumors about a concerning TikTok challenge into a viral media manipulation campaign.

In response to The Post’s investigation, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, commented on Twitter: “Facebook fanned the flames of the Devious Licks hoax and terrified teachers, students and parents across America as a result. They didn't care about the impact on teachers and students, they just wanted to attack a competitor. This is really shameful.”

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[1] Url: https://mediamanipulation.org/case-studies/slap-teacher-tiktok-hoax-media-fueled-panic

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