The 'slap a teacher' TikTok challenge was never real, but rumors at one high school started a nationwide panic

• A nationwide panic about the supposed "slap a teacher" TikTok challenge sent educators scrambling last year.
• But there was never any evidence that the challenge was real or that it originated on TikTok.

A widespread moral panic last year about a TikTok challenge involving children slapping teachers was a prime example of how viral misinformation can take hold of media coverage, according to a report from Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy published Tuesday.

The news coverage around the supposed "slap a teacher" trend first started to originate in late September 2021 when a teacher in California received a dubious list of allegedly upcoming TikTok challenges, according to the report. But researchers were unable to find any evidence of that list originating from TikTok and instead it appears to have spread through Facebook groups of worried parents and educators.

The new research was conducted by Jazilah Salam, a research assistant at the Shorenstein Center, who told Insider that the spread of misinformation related to the "slap a teacher" TikTok challenge was an example of media manipulation. The fake challenge may have gone viral organically, but it soon became used as a means of influencing news outlets to spread negative stories about TikTok.

How 'slap a teacher' became a widespread panic

The calendar of supposed challenges spread in various Facebook groups that included figures like principals and school resource officers. A version of the list of challenges was even shared on one public Facebook page with 42,000 followers, run by a school resource officer who is considered an influencer among parents and teachers, according to the report.

The rumors spread around US school systems, which began issuing warnings and creating policies to respond to such incidents, the report said, even though there was no evidence the challenge was real. Groups like the National Education Association and the California Teachers Association made statements that referenced the supposed trend. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong wrote a letter to TikTok about the 'harmful impact the viral app is having on mental and physical safety' that mentioned the non-existent challenge.

Local and national outlets reported about the supposed challenge, sometimes attributing violence in schools to the TikTok challenge without providing evidence that the incidents were at all associated with a social-media challenge, the report said.

"I spent a lot of time reading through a lot of articles that referred to 'slap a teacher' from September 2022, and not a single article that I read cited any actual direct evidence of this challenge on the platform," Salam told Insider.

TikTok quickly said it found no evidence of such videos circulating on its platform, telling Insider in an October 2021 statement that the "alleged 'challenge' would violate our policies and we would aggressively remove such content, but the reality is that we have not found related content on our platform, and most people appear to be learning about the offline dare from sources other than TikTok."

But even though Insider and other outlets, including Snopes, Vice, and Gimlet, debunked the challenge in October, news reports and panic about the non-existent challenge continued to spread, according to Salam.

"In December, which was two months after all of these debunks, there were still articles talking about this as if it was a real challenge," Salam said. "I think my research reinforces the point that debunks don't travel as far as the initial misinformation and they're unable to effectively mitigate misinformation spreading."

A viral hoax turns into media manipulation

Soon after rumors of the challenge circulated on Facebook, local news outlets began picking up stories on it.

USA Today on October 8 published an article that stated the supposed challenge was the "latest trend that has resulted in some students facing charges," though the article also stated that a search for the challenge on TikTok resulted in "zero results." Fox 2 in St. Louis in an October 11 article wrote "TikTok videos have been posted across the country of teachers and school staff getting slapped and the student then running away," though it didn't provide evidence of such videos. And an Associated Press report published December 16 mentioned the challenge without evidence, writing that "students were challenged to slap a teacher" in October.

The spread of "slap a teacher" turned from an instance of misinformation to media manipulation after it was reported that Meta, Facebook's parent company, had hired a consulting firm to spread negative information about TikTok, its competitor.

The firm Targeted Victory worked on behalf of Meta to spread both real and unfounded claims about TikTok in local news outlets in the form of op-eds and letters to the editor, as The Washington Post reported in March. The campaign included spreading panic over the bogus "slap a teacher" challenge, the report said.

Salam speculated the fake challenge continued to appear in news stories because TikTok, as a platform, was still new and potentially misunderstood by both the people who initially spread rumors about the challenge and by reporters who weren't "comfortable enough" to properly verify that the challenge even existed.

"This case to me showed the role and power of local news in communities to both inform and create a panic. I think it speaks to the importance of local journalists, and all journals in general… to verify what they are repeating," Salam said.