TikTok’s “Phone in Your Back Pocket” Challenge Lets You See Behind Your Back

Remember when you were a kid and your parents used to tell you that they had eyes on the back of their heads? Well, thanks to the Phone in Your Back Pocket Challenge that’s going viral on TikTok, you actually can have eyes on the back of your head… well, kind of. More like on the back of your bum.

The challenge is a way to “catch” people who might be looking where they shouldn’t, or who are simply falling prey to their lizard brains. Here’s everything you need to know about the challenge.

The Phone in Your Back Pocket Challenge is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You put your phone in your back pocket. Of course, if that were the whole challenge, millions of people would be doing it every day. There’s one more step to the challenge — you start recording a video on your phone and then put it in your back pocket with your camera facing backward, effectively capturing footage of whatever goes on behind you.

You can probably see where this is going. The idea is that your camera will catch whenever someone looks at it — or, more accurately, at your behind. Unbeknownst to that person, they’ll be caught on tape and you’ll have video evidence of their behavior.

This challenge comes with a bunch of caveats. First of all, people who look at your phone while it’s in your back pocket could simply be looking at the phone in your back pocket. We’re not saying that’s what they’re most likely to look at, but hey, it’s possible. Secondly, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with checking out someone’s behind — in fact, it’s kind of how humans work, like, evolutionarily speaking.

That being said, some people who have participated in the challenge have caught some pretty reprehensible behavior on camera — things like people taking pictures or following them around a store. We shouldn’t have to tell anyone that that kind of behavior is super inappropriate.

Finally, whenever people upload their own Phone in Your Back Pocket Challenge videos to TikTok, there are inevitably people in the comments saying things like, “Well, you shouldn’t have dressed like that if you didn’t want people to look.” Let’s just go on record here saying that people can wear whatever they want for any reason that they want, right? Right. So don’t be one of the people who leaves comments like that.

There’s also something slightly questionable about uploading footage of people who weren’t aware they were being filmed — particularly in the case of people who simply glanced at a stranger’s butt (again, not inherently a crime!). If you find yourself wanting to participate in this challenge, it’s probably worth it to ask yourself whether you would want footage of you looking at someone’s butt uploaded to TikTok.

You could also make a joke version of the challenge — those are usually pretty funny. We’re especially fans of the ones that catch dogs looking at their owner’s back-end. As with all TikTok (and other online platform) challenges, please be safe and smart!