Parents Are Cracking Eggs on Their Kids’ Heads as a Prank — TikTok Isn’t Laughing

By now, nearly everyone knows there’s never a shortage of content on TikTok. Whether you want to know about the latest fashion hack or what songs are trending on the interwebs, a guaranteed pocket of the popular app tickles your fancy.

For many, the parental side of TikTok, better known as #ParentTok, has been an intriguing way for parents to stay connected. Viewers can use the hashtag to see multiple families giving advice, sharing adorable moments with their kids, or participating in viral challenges.

In August 2023, one trend — the cracked egg prank challenge — shook TikTok. Initially, the challenge was all fun and games when women began pranking their husbands by cracking an egg on their heads.

But at some point, parents thought trying the prank on their young, toddler-aged children would be a great idea. Once that happened, the trend became not so funny and sparked plenty of online chatter.

While pranking your children, in general, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you want to ensure that the prank doesn’t hurt the ones you’re supposed to love the most — physically or emotionally. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case for TikTok parents involving their children in a prank that embarrasses them against their will.

In the viral cracked egg challenge, parents record themselves cooking or baking something with their children that involves eggs. As they have their kids help them in the kitchen, they pretend to “crack” the egg first while they look into the camera. Then, the parent uses their child’s forehead to crack the egg, usually followed by tons of laughter on the adult’s end.

Although the parents who join in on the TikTok prank think what they’re doing is funny, it doesn’t seem to be the case on the child’s end. Several videos show the children with the eggs cracked on their heads, looking confused and unsure of what happened to them.

Others, like TikToker @avekish’s video, prove that the kids are fed up with the trend. In her TikTok, she recorded herself with her sister and her toddler niece cooking with eggs. The TikToker and her sister cracked two eggs on her niece’s head, instantly causing the baby to be distressed.

As she realized what had happened, she looked at the “adults” in the room and said, “That’s not very nice.” Little Mama then got her “get back” moment by cracking the egg on the TikToker’s sister’s head.

In addition to the cracking-egg-on-kids’-head prank not being the most positive experience for the kids on the other side of TikTok, adults watching the trend live have shared their thoughts on the viral sensation.

Underneath the comments of the TikToks, many users have shamed the parents who have decided to record their young children being pranked. Several users suggested that the embarrassing acts would stay with the kids “forever” and that they didn’t deserve the adults’ treatment.

On the other hand, several users said that the videos were “cute” and harmless to the children’s psyche.

Amid the online banter, one TikTok influencer, Sarah Adams, known as @mom.uncharted on TikTok, responded to the trend after saying she had been tagged in the videos multiple times. In her post, Sarah scolded the parents following the trend of using their children for social media clout.

“When I see those videos, I think, ‘Are we that bored as parents and desperate for content?’” Sarah said in her video. “[Are we] needing to post on the internet so bad because it is so consuming to be a part of our world?”

The TikToker also noted that the parents participating in the trend are likely desperate for the “dopamine hit” that comes with getting “likes and views.”

Still, she said she believes the idea of using kids as content is problematic, especially when the parents are doing so to impress people they don’t even know, adding that parents “now, in 2023, are cracking eggs on our children’s heads in hopes that they have an entertaining reaction that we can post publicly online to entertain strangers?”