Recently an online trend has been taking off, primarily on short-form social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels. This trend specifically centered around irresponsible “activities” attributed to students with low GPAs or little dedication to their academics. 

After doing some digging, and watching some of the media myself, I began to notice some patterns. One video posted by “Bro Archive” on YouTube titled “0.02 gpa activities” depicts a student quite literally nailing a nail into the USB port of his laptop. Many of the following videos that came after followed this formula, of inserting something into the USB port. However, more recent posts have shown smaller, metallic pieces, such as paper clips or pencil lead being stuck in the port, not to destroy the functionality of the port, but the entire computer. In some of these videos, sparks can be seen emitting from the ports as an obvious electrical reaction takes place. But frying just the port is not always the goal… 

As recently covered by NBC News, this trend of sticking metallic objects into USB ports has resulted in computers catching fire, and in some cases, literally exploding. This trend had evolved from the tampering of the USBs to the aftermath of this computer decimation, with these videos (or pictures) containing classrooms full of smoke, or absurd amounts of smoke spewing from these laptops. Some students have even gone as far as creating weird, metal contraptions (usually implementing a bent paperclip) with the sole purpose of being stuck in school outlets often resulting in sparks and the outlet being completely burnt out. Not all videos, however, follow this dangerous blueprint. Some just show less intricate forms of destroying the computer, such as smashing in the screen, or lobbing the computers at walls, sometimes on school property. 

You may ask yourself, why? Well, a couple of recurring themes might have answers. For one, almost every single computer that is seen being damaged are not personal laptops, rather school issued Chromebooks. As a recent attendee of a public school up until this semester, this sure makes sense as these Chromebooks were notorious for how little they were valued. They’re had been rumors since middle school suggesting the price of an individual laptop was as low as twenty dollars (of course my school’s technician debunked this, revealing they are more than 10 times that price) and this surely minimized the respect in which they were treated. They were often used as folders to stuff papers in until the computers would literally bend, and irritated students had no issue slamming their fists down on theirs or slamming it shut. It’s important to note, at both my middle school and high school, breaking something such as the screen was a $30 fee, and your computer would be promptly repaired. 

There’s another much more identifiable pattern seen in these videos, however, that suggest the motivation to do such things may be more than a lack of respect for school issued computers. That being the participants of these videos have a tendency to identify themselves or the person being recorded as a “0.01 GPA” student, or somewhere in that ballpark (just really low GPAs) playing into the assumption that a student attempting to detonate their laptop probably doesn’t have much care for their educational prowess either. This adds up, too; as AP News reports, as of recently an exam given to schools across the nation named the “Nation’s Report Card” shows a decline in students’ knowledgeability in both Math and Reading. Adding on to this, Turnbridge reports more than half of the youth with major depressive disorder do not seek help. The culmination of devolving knowledge and mental stability in teenagers may have a significant relation to the recent uprise in careless decisions that often earn the online poster nothing of “value” besides the attention of their peers and other online strangers. 

So, referring back to where we started, these impulsive decisions are a major issue in the modern school system. But maybe it’s more than that. I personally see this as an indicator of the neglection of reinforcing educational importance, along with the importance of addressing mental health. Although this doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone, at my previous school, it wasn’t hard to start sinking in the missing assignments and poor grades, and it’s a slippery slope from there. It wasn’t uncommon for other students to begin falling behind and simply be left behind, as schools now a days are just so large and only so many students can be attended to. It also wasn’t uncommon to feel trapped and helpless, and a certain point, it just seems like this “learning stuff” wasn’t worth the effort, and thus students resort to gaining social acceptance and praise to make up for the educational ranks they were lacking in.