About

The Pass The Phone Challenge refers to a game played on TikTok in which a person films themself saying "I'm passing the phone to" then exposes something embarrassing about a person and passes the phone to them. The next person does the same, exposing another person, and so on. The game first appeared on TikTok in March 2021, becoming increasingly popular on the platform in the following months. It is largely collected under the hashtags "#passthephone" and "#passthephonechallenge."

Origin

It is unclear who originally came up with the Pass The Phone Challenge, but the earliest known video playing the game was uploaded to TikTok^[1] on February 28th, 2021, by @morganroyyy, who posted a video passing the phone around her cheerleading squad, garnering over 671,000 views in four months (shown below).

Spread

The game spread quickly over the course of the next month, with a number of TikTokers posting viral videos playing it in March. For example, on March 3rd, TikToker^[2] @imgriffinjohnson posted a video playing the game with a number of other TikTokers, garnering over 8 million views in three months (shown below).

On March 14th, TikToker^[3] @julissangelina posted a video playing the game with her siblings, garnering over 10 million views in three months (shown below, left). On March 31st, TIkToker^[4] @enjoy.qwan posted a video playing the game, garnering over 660,000 views in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

On April 15th, TikToker^[9] @rosssmith posted a version of the trend that garnered over 5.3 million views in two months (shown below).

On May 31st, TikToker^[5] @mimibrie posted a video playing the game in which the camera continually lands on one person, exposing her for a number of things including getting banned from Italy, garnering over 1.9 million views in a month (shown below, left). On June 1st, she posted a video explaining how she's banned from Italy (shown below, right).

The trend has been covered by a number of news and entertainment outlets, including Yahoo! Movies^[7] and Bustle.^[8] On June 3rd, the Memphis & Shelby County Joint Task Force posted a video to YouTube^[6] encouraging people to get their COVID-19 vaccinations, in which they act as if they're performing the trend (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References