TikTok, Instagram and YouTube users post footage shot from a driver’s perspective of cars weaving dangerously through packed traffic. Photograph: Nazar Abbas Photography/Getty Images View image in fullscreen TikTok, Instagram and YouTube users post footage shot from a driver’s perspective of cars weaving dangerously through packed traffic. Photograph: Nazar Abbas Photography/Getty Images Social media Speeding for online glory: the internet subculture where young men drive dangerously for likes Social media trend feeds on footage shot from cars racing down busy roads, with potentially lethal consequences
Robert Booth UK technology editor Tue 25 Aug 2026 09.00 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google The hashtags tell the story of the potentially lethal social media subculture where young men film themselves hurtling at illegal speeds down busy roads: #speedhunters, #needforspeed, #racing.
The fast-driving internet trend on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube is fed by footage shot from a driver’s perspective of cars going “#fullsend” – the jargon for roaring down dual carriageways – and “#gapping” or “#swimming”, as in weaving dangerously through packed traffic. The posts attract thousands, sometimes millions of views and have been described by Andy Burnham on Monday as “truly reprehensible” .
The prime minister spoke out after seven deaths on Saturday, including two police officers and five young men aged 17 to 23, when the young men drove the wrong way down the A66 in Teesside after a police chase. It has been reported one of the young men killed in the car previously posted fast-driving clips. Cleveland police said there was currently “no evidence that filming of the activities on Friday night and Saturday morning was for the purposes of TikTok”.
Read more Last week a similar incident shocked Ireland when five teenagers – some of whom had previously posted videos of reckless driving – were killed when their car travelling in the wrong direction on the M9 crashed into another vehicle. The Irish police said: “In some cases it is being done for social media likes.”
Several factors are behind this trend, experts say. Young men have long been sensation seekers with a tendency to push whatever limits adults impose, according to Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics and an expert in social media harms.
Social media now extends the momentary thrill of speed with the promise of clout and glory as the drivers’ exploits spread through the internet. It is a case, Livingstone said, of “putting their foot down in the offline world knowing it wins them points in the online world”. If views rise high enough, there is also the prospect of cash rewards from some of the social media companies.
“There is a lot of research on how the online world of fame and visibility is increasingly significant for boys and young men in a context in which they don’t have a lot of other ways of affirmation,” said Livingstone, who called the incidents absolutely horrifying.
“We might ask how else boys and young men get a moment of affirmation,” she said. “Many young people are feeling depressed and hopeless about the future. It doesn’t offer them opportunities to shine and a path where they can see their future.”
The reach of the most popular accounts can be huge. Joseph Ondrak, director at Peryton Intelligence, a company that monitors harmful online subcultures, identified a user called Squeeze Benz with more than a millio…