Cracking an Egg on Your Kid’s Head for TikTok Clout Isn’t Cute (2024)

In the social media economy, attention is currency. Even if it comes at the expense of your kids.

The egg crack challenge is the latest craze sweeping TikTok. It isn’t a fun dance routine, ASMR cleaning videos, or #GirlDinner. It’s a prank that consists of cracking an egg on your kid’s forehead and seeing how they respond.

Almost universally, they are reacting badly. (I mean, wouldn’t you?) In a compilation video, which shows several young kids having eggs smashed on their heads, the children all react with shock and dismay. Some cry, some whine, some just look confused. One little girl tells her mother, “What the hell?” Another boy smacks his dad back.

“That wasn’t very nice,” says one little girl sadly, as two adult women laugh beside her. “[Should I] do it to you?”

Despite the fact that grown adults should know, as the girl said, smashing an egg on someone’s head is not nice, the egg crack challenge has taken off on TikTok. It’s easy to see why. The hashtags #eggcrackchallenge, #eggcrackprank, and #eggcrack have more than 300 million video views combined, with some of the top videos getting millions and millions of views.

This isn’t the first prank to go viral at the expense of young kids. Last year parents were throwing slices of cheese on their babies. “NO HATERS! This trend is hilarious! 😂 I love my baby,” wrote one user on a video of her infant looking puzzled at a slice being thrown at their head. The video has been viewed nearly 5 million times.

Another trend that’s gone around since 2020 has parents taking a bottle of water and flicking it onto their baby’s face. In one, which has been viewed nearly 2 million times, the baby topples over in surprise.

However, as the egg cracking trend has grown in popularity, some prominent parenting creators are speaking out against it. Nika Diwa, who has 2.4 million followers on TikTok, made a video under the hashtag #eggcrackprank with her daughter. Instead of hitting her daughter with an egg, Diwa says to the camera, “Stop hitting your kids with eggs.”

“It’s so easy nowadays to want to hop on a trend just because it’s viral without thinking of the consequences,” Diwa tells Glamour. “But as a parent, we have a greater responsibility to steward our littles well and to do our best to protect them from potential harm.”

Diwa, the mother of two little girls, says the videos she saw of the challenge upset her because the children seemed confused.

“These littles have brains and bodies that are still developing and cannot understand or consent to these types of trends,” she adds. “I understand most parents would never intentionally harm their kids and are doing it in the name of innocent fun. But for the sake of making our kids feel optimally safe, I think it’s worth pausing to ask ourselves: Is the potential damage really worth a couple likes on social media?”