Chromebook challenge

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The Chromebook Challenge is a 2025 TikTok trend where students intentionally insert conductive, often metallic, objects like paper clips, pencil lead, and foreign objects into their school Chromebooks USB port.^[1] Doing so would cause the Chromebook to short circuit and sometimes spark, smoke, or even catch on fire.^[2][3] The challenge is typically meant to create a reason for a class to evacuate, thus making participants have to miss out on class, or simply get online attention.^[4] "The F students are the inventors" is a popular phrase associated with the trend.

As of May 16th, 2025, 14 incidents were reported in the state of Massachusetts alone.^[5][a] Over 200 incidents were recorded in Colorado. ^[6]

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