Youths caught on camera kicking in door for social media challenge

London, Ont. -

Ontario Provincial Police are sounding the alarm over an online challenge that encourages participants to kick in the doors of homes.

It follows one such incident over the weekend in Port Dover, Ont. that was caught on home security camera and left the residents in one home shaken.

Video posted by the OPP appears to show three youths filming themselves kicking in the door of a residence for a social media challenge.

The incident happened early Saturday morning.

“Not only is it becoming a nuisance, however, now you’re coming to a point where now you’re committing criminal offences,” said Sgt. Ed Sanchuk of West Region OPP. “When you trespass on someone’s property at 1:30 in the morning, kicking in a door, actually kicking that door in, there are some significant charges there. So we need our youth to understand the fact that they need to be held to account for their actions.”

Sanchuk added that an identifiable vehicle can be seen in the window reflection of the home that was damaged, adding, “It appears that an F-150 shows up to pick up the youths.”

Police are asking anyone who recognizes the youth in the video to contact them.

A study published last week by the social media platform TikTok asked teens why they take part in online challenges. The top reason was to get comments, views and likes. That was followed by impressing others.

Anabel Quan-Hasse is a professor of Technology and Society at Western University. She said taking part in online challenges is about gaining what’s known as digital capital.

“When you’re the centre of attention, when you’ve done something that everybody else kind of thinks is pretty cool. Of course that depends a lot I think on the value system they’re imposing to this,” she said.

“The cool factor here is often the peer evaluation, and the kind of digital audience that can be pretty large. The digital capital that they’re gaining can be in the thousands of likes.”