Please, kids: Do not set your Chromebook on fire
*Grabs chair, spins it around, and sits on it backward. *
Hey teens, it's me. Your friendly local 44-year-old tech blogger at Business Insider, every high schooler's favorite website. And I'm here to say: setting your Chromebook on fire is "skibidi Ohio." Don't do it.
Sure, there's a viral TikTok challenge going around that encourages kids like you to jam a paperclip, gum wrapper, or other item into the USB drive of your school-issued Chromebooks, which will cause them to start smoking, shoot sparks, or even catch on fire.
But don't do it.
Even though you may be bored, and lighting stuff on fire is undeniably cool-looking, and it's almost summer break, and your teacher has negative aura, and Chromebooks represent the tyranny of the prison called "school" where they indoctrinate your mind with algebra and facts about the Treaty of Ghent that you will never need in real life because there's calculators, and Prussia isn't real, and there's ChatGPT anyway that can do this all for you, and adults will all be using it in the future, it's still not worth it. [Note: No AI was used to write this important public service message.]
So please, do not light your Chromebook on fire — it can cause serious injury. This is a rizzles and sus road you don't want to go down. There is no sigma here.
TikTok has taken some action. Searching "Chromebook challenge" on the app generates a warning message saying "some online challenges can be dangerous, disturbing, or even fabricated." (Though searching Chromebook still generates plenty of videos of smoking Acers.) TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
You're a teen, you know how silly grown-ups are about this stuff. We're always yapping about some moral panic "challenge" on TikTok that's not even real. But this time? No cap, it's real.
Kids are facing charges in several states for messing with their Chromebooks. A 13-year-old was arrested on suspicion of arson in Long Beach, California, and students at schools in Arizona face possible criminal charges, according to the Bullhead City Fire Department. Two teens in Southington, Connecticut, are facing misdemeanor charges including criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.
Fellow kids, I understand that you're currently living in a time where you might feel under the yoke of technology. You feel complicated about how much you use social media, and meanwhile your parents read " The Anxious Generation" and are now freaking out because they regret giving you a phone in sixth grade, even though that phone has had Life 360 survellience software installed this whole time. You know that the future of work involves AI, but your teachers get weird and mad about you using it for homework (even though literally everyone does). And this whole time you're supposed to be getting good grades to go to college, but the institution of higher education is under attack and kids are getting arrested on campus for protesting, and you're taking on a lifetime of debt for some degree for a job that could be replaced by a chatbot in five years anyway. So like the Luddite cloth workers of the Industrial Revolution, you take a stand and fight and break against the machine that yokes you. W hy not just jam a paperclip in that Chromebook just to see if something real happens, something tangible, like smoke or fire, just to remember that you're here, you're alive, you're young, you exist?
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