Every generation of teenage boys invents a new way to make adults want to move to a cabin in the woods. The current one involves bikes, wheelies, and riding directly at strangers until someone flinches.Youngsters are calling it snapping. A kid on a bike or e-bike pops a wheelie, heads straight toward someone, then cuts away right before they hit them. In the TikTok and Instagram clips going around, pedestrians jump, drivers brake, and one young girl gets knocked from her stroller. The comments are full of people calling it assault. In some places, that might not be an exaggeration.Worcester, Massachusetts, saw a version of this years ago, when teens started playing chicken with city buses. Police eventually formed a task force and began confiscating bikes. “They’re basically cheating death,” one resident told CBS News. “They have no sense of their own mortality.” Officers also filed disorderly conduct charges and went into schools to talk about it. It helped, for a while. @curlydaddy101 HITTING PEOPLE WITH A BIKE AS A “PRANK” is kind of weird bro… #bike #prank #public #swerve #rude ♬ wtf u tryna say? – Devstacks What Is ‘Snapping’? The Risky Trend Teens Are Doing With Bikes and E-Bikes.Social media gives the stunt an audience and a reason to push it further. A bigger reaction makes a better video, so the rider has every incentive to get closer, wait longer, and scare the hell out of whoever’s in front of them. Clips have surfaced in the US, UK, and Australia. Cheryl Spruce of Neighbourhood Watch told Metro that some elderly residents have stopped going outside because of it. “It’s really, really dangerous,” she said.A driver who jerks the wheel to avoid a bike can hit another car, hop the curb, or plow into somebody standing nearby. The rider only has to mistime the swerve once to end up under a car. Playing chicken with traffic gives everyone involved very little room to screw up, and teenage confidence is not famous for respecting that margin.Teenage boys have always found ways to scare the hell out of adults. The internet just gives them a camera, an audience, and a number telling them how well it went. Snapping will probably disappear eventually. Another stunt will replace it, and somebody’s mother will once again wonder why buying the bike seemed like such a good idea.The post What Is ‘Snapping’? The Dangerous Trend Teens Are Using to Terrify Pedestrians. appeared first on VICE.