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Kids are short circuiting their school issued Chromebooks for TikTok clout Ars Technica
(arstechnica.com)
Things that shouldn’t exist: TikTok clout
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
164 points (97.7% liked)
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would be the same with facebook
You say that like Facebook and/or clout isn't also roundly in the "worst shit ever," category
Would be the same with stories told at the [insert local hangout]
I'm pretty sure Facebook has no Clout left
I'm no electrical engineer but:
Why the fuck can you short a chromebook at the power port? Shouldn't that have some sort of safety? Can you short a toughbook through the power port? Definitely keeping the little cover closed on mine when it's not plugged in from now on (garage machine)
You can short-circuit basically anything with exposed contacts and a paper clip. This isn't specific to Chromebooks.
Pretty much any device with a USB port can be catastrophically short-circuited, because most USB ports are capable of supplying some amount of power. You can even buy "USB Killers", which look like a thumb drive but will fry the internals of whatever they get plugged into.
IIRC USB killers work because they're sustained high voltage. USB ports can often deal with a static discharge or over current, but a sustained 200 volts will let the magic smoke out.
I guess I just assumed there was some way to protect against it but I don't know anything about electronics.
They do make special shielding for USB and other ports, but most manufacturers don't use them because generally people aren't going to stick foreign objects into their computer for internet points.
Often times, those "public chargers" you sometimes see in airports and such have that shielding installed on the ports (though you should never use public USB ports to charge your devices, for a dozen other reasons).
USB condom works for public chargers. It's called a "usb data blocker" and goes for under $10
Don’t you need to manually approve data transmission through USB?
In an ideal situation, yes. Not all devices even do this and when they do, there is the whole concept of hacking.
That's my thoughts as well
I once abused a USB port on my laptop to use as a 5v power supply but I later shorted it by connecting the wrong wires. It didn't explode but it did blow the fuse for that port.
Especially something marketed to schools to issue to every student. Seems like a basic safety feature. Sure, they shouldn't be doing that but c'mon... kids do dumb shit sometimes.
Kids do dumb shit all times
It's only a safety feature if it stops someone from getting injured. If it just kills the device, that means they have to buy a replacement!
but... fire
kids would cut their own balls off if someone started a tiktok challenge about it
That's a great idea. Solves the entire issue in just a few generations.
Give AI another year or so
does not look as cool as arson
they ate tidepods, and did the blackout challenge, where someone even died from blacking out.
Google didn’t respond to Ars Technica’s request for comment.
"The fuck would we have to say? Don't do this. Obviously. Fucking stupid."
Unless it's Google hardware I don't really know what they could say. It would have been better for them to contact actual Chromebook manufacturers such as Lenovo, Acer, or Dell.
Its a stupid trend, but at the end of the day teenagers will do stuff like this no matter what generation you look at. I hope they can become educated to why this is bad and you shouldn't do it.
It's different when kids are doing bad shit on a platform that amplifies their reach.
No doubt
Things like this were certainly better before social media, when a trend like this would be contained to a school and would be less likely to spread across the world.
I think if we knew what the capabiltiies of social media platforms would be 25+ years ago, it would certainly be something we would see coming. The idea that a teenagers telling a bunch of other teenagers hundreds of kiometeres away what dumb and dangerous idea they came up with is probably one of the more predicable things that has happened.
Back in my day it was just dumb shit like breaking the CD ROM drive or sticking gum in the floppy drive. Stupid, but not killing the whole-ass computer.
Schools should just give any kid that fries their laptop a license to use pen and paper for the rest of the year.
I meant more broadly than just breaking computers, but I guess for as long as computers have been in school teenagers have been finding creative ways to break them.
Was always a BYOD kid since our school allowed it (and I think most if not all should) and I preferred using GNU/Linux over Windows so I never really did anything like this myself. I've scavenged parts from (usually ewasted) school computers before, but that's a story for a different day.
The kids in our schools were also surprisingly well behaved in this manner. It's not even that I haven't heard of kids doing stuff to their school computers elsewhere I just haven't really noticed it to be too bad where I was. Maybe a few incidents of kids picking the keys off the keyboard but otherwise not really much. I wonder if it's still the same way or if it's changed, but I guess I'll know that once I start working for a school IT department.
It’s almost like kids are prone to doing stupid things to impress others, because they lack the life experience to properly evaluate something’s potential for causing death and/severe bodily harm. Who knew?
no you are wrong. the actual truth is that the new generation is bad and doomed, unlike my generation, which is the best one. /s
You're right. Even the ancient Egyptians were using tiktok to spread bad ideas.
Man, that goofy walk was EVERYWHERE for a hot minute.
It's so disappointing that this is the first generation of kids to ever do dumb shit for dumb reasons, I personally blame the parents
I disassembled 8 today, other guy had 26. We haven't dealt with any catching fire, yet.
This is how you can tell they live in the first world.
Back in my day, if we'd had laptops in school, we'd have done it to get out of class. Man times really have changed.
The parents who couldn't afford the optional insurance in shambles
Dunno about other districts, but locally? Only accidents are covered and it's hard to argue this should qualify.
I would say a teacher would just shrug, and shake thier head in quizzical abjacet disappointment and move on, but im sure thier sad, because you know there is some module or homework that must be done on that chromebook that id it doesn't get done the teacher will get in troublem