Once Again, Mainstream Media Falls For A Fake TikTok Challenge, Creating Yet Another Moral Panic

Overhype

from the the-moral-panic-challenge dept

It seems to happen over and over again, and the mainstream media always makes it worse. The mainstream media hears about a “TikTok challenge,” reports on it like crazy, and people freak out that TikTok is destroying the children or some such.

And every single time, it turns out that the media got the story wrong. Often ridiculously so. There was the “devious licks” challenge, which at least had some basis in truth, but which TikTok cracked down on almost immediately. But when good reporters scratched the surface they found that it was mostly kids pranking adults, making them think that something bad was going to happen.

But, even worse, there was a big moral panic about the “slap a teacher” challenge that the media got up in arms about. Only, that one turned out to have been literally made up by some random adult and then spread by a school cop on Facebook, claiming that it was an upcoming TikTok challenge. Or the “school violence challenge,” which was reported all over the media, causing many schools to shut down entirely for the day, where there is no indication that it was ever actually a thing. And, if it was, the news was spread much more widely by TV news anchors freaking out about it without any evidence that it was real. And, no, the NyQuil chicken challenge was never actually a thing.

And now there’s been another one. At the Washington Post, Taylor Lorenz highlights how the Today Show did a segment about “the boat jump challenge” in which kids were allegedly jumping from moving boats into the water for clout on TikTok. Only problem it was all made up.

But it was all untrue. There is no boat jumping challenge on TikTok. Before the media frenzy, no boat jumping videos had gone viral on TikTok, and no hashtag related to jumping off boats had ever been popular on TikTok, according to the company. Not a single trending audio on TikTok has ever been linked to jumping off boats.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency issued a statement denouncing the story. “On Monday, July 3, a news story was shared regarding ‘first responders warning against a deadly boating TikTok trend after recent drownings’ in Alabama,” the organization tweeted on Monday. “Please be advised that the information released to the news outlet was incorrect. The ALEA Marine Patrol Division does not have any record(s) of boating or marine-related fatalities in Alabama that can be directly linked to TikTok or a trend on TikTok.”

The story is even worse than that. While the original comments from Jim Dennis, captain of the Childersburg Rescue Squad claimed that there were four drownings this year that were directly attributable to this “TikTok challenge,” he later walked back those comments, saying his comments were “blown way out of proportion” and that he couldn’t “say that’s the reason they died.” But the later statement from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency actually said no one died. One person died jumping from a boat in 2020 and one more in 2021. No one died that way in 2022 or this year, let alone four people.

So, no death, no TikTok challenge.

Of course, that didn’t stop tons of news reports from running with it.

Dozens of stories followed. People, Forbes, the Daily Mail, the New York Post, and countless other outlets repeated what the Today Show had claimed, that at least four people’s deaths were directly tied to this alleged “TikTok challenge.” Right-wing internet commentators who have been critical of TikTok amplified the misinformation. “Four people have died from TikTok’s latest challenge,” tweeted conservative influencer Ian Miles Cheong in a tweet that received 4.7 million views. “ … And those are just the four police know of.”

Thankfully, after Alabama officials said the story was bullshit, the Today Show retracted their story. People also retracted its story. Others simply deleted their stories.

Of course, about the only good thing here is that at least a few more people are looking more skeptically at some of these stories. One journalism professor in Alabama issued the “don’t fall for social media challenges challenge” which I’m guessing won’t get that much attention.

Filed Under: boat jumping challenge, mainstream media, moral panic, tiktok challenge, today show