Faculties throughout US cancel lessons over unconfirmed TikTok threats

School districts in the United States are canceling classes on Friday, December 17, amid reports of threats allegedly being made via TikTok. Districts in California, Texas, Minnesota and Missouri have announced they will close on Friday in response, according to the districts and local media reports. Elsewhere, districts have announced plans to increase police presence or emailed parents to inform them that they are investigating the allegations.

But so far there is little evidence that the threats are credible – or even exist. Counties and local law enforcement agencies broadly say they heard of a trend pointing to the possibility of shootings or bombings on Sept.

A number of counties and law enforcement agencies said they have looked into the issue and do not see the threats as believable or even real. “Law enforcement agencies have investigated this threat and determined that it originated in Arizona and is not credible,” the Baltimore County Public Schools wrote on Twitter. “There have been no threats to any of the schools in Mexico at the moment. [Missouri]“Wrote a school district in Missouri. “There were no local, credible threats,” Ohio’s Milford Exempted Village School District wrote to parents. In New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy tweeted, “No specific threats against schools in New Jersey are known.”

While no specific threats to schools in New Jersey are known, the safety of our children is a top priority and we will work closely with law enforcement to monitor the situation and stay prepared.

– Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) December 16, 2021

The reporting of threats on TikTok can continue on its own. Videos posted on TikTok warn others that they will be on the 17th. And now that schools are canceling classes in response to these alleged threats, a new wave of videos has emerged with additional warnings based on both the alleged allegations and based on the actual cancellations of some school classes.

TikTok says it has not identified any videos that pose specific threats. “We have not found any evidence that such threats arise or spread via TikTok,” the company wrote in a tweet on Thursday afternoon. TikTok said it was working with law enforcement agencies to nonetheless examine the warnings with “the utmost seriousness”.

We even deal with threat rumors with the utmost seriousness. For this reason, we are working with law enforcement to investigate warnings of potential violence in schools, even though we have found no evidence that such threats originated or spread through TikTok.

– TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) December 16, 2021

A school district in Little Falls, Minnesota, decided to cancel classes on Friday after being informed by the State Department of Public Safety of “a TikTok trend coming on Friday the 17th,” according to a post on Little’s website If Community Schools, law enforcement agencies found in interviews that Little Falls was “specifically identified in a TikTok post related to this threat,” unlike other schools and school districts who believe they were not named.

But the district didn’t say they actually saw the threat themselves.

Superintendent Stephen Jones said in an email to The Verge that, after consulting with law enforcement, the Little Falls district had taken the decision to cancel. “What I can tell you is that the threat was communicated to the schools through students who allegedly saw them on TikTok,” Jones said, adding that police are investigating. “The fact that the source of the threat has not been identified has led us to be proactive in our desire to be careful to keep our children and families safe.”

At least one police station said they saw a message threatening a school on Friday: Police in Gilroy, California described a threatening post that contained initials that matched a local high school, and the school was canceled as a result. But police say they later discovered that the post was actually about a different high school in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles School Police Department identified who posted it and determined that it was not a “credible threat.” Gilroy police did not say whether the post was created on TikTok. The Los Angeles School Police Department and Gilroy Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for more information.

School districts have already dealt with dangerous rumors that went viral on TikTok. This year there were concerns about a “Slap a Teacher” challenge which turned out to be fake. Another supposed challenge was challenging the children to steal items from their school; in this case, some students actually followed suit – although others, it turned out, were just pretending to take things to get on the trend.

Comments are closed.