A teenager’s explosive outburst inside a cellphone retailer has drawn millions of views online.
The clip, posted to TikTok by user @wydchichii with the caption, “Her mom cut off her phone,” shows a mother-daughter duo in an AT&T store as the teen daughter pleads with her mother.
The video starts with the teen jumping up and down wildly before she grabs her mother by the neck and screams, “Mama, PLEASE!”
Outraged by her daughter’s hysterical tantrum, the mother shouts over her daughter, “Shut the f*** up!”
The daughter is seen loudly and tearfully shouting, “Please!” with her arms stretched wide, begging her mother to reverse her decision. At one point, she slams her hand on a table, prompting the mom to command her again to quiet down.
The video cuts to a part where the mother tries to walk her daughter outside as her daughter wraps her arm around her neck and grabs onto her, continuing to plead with her mom.
Just as the pair make it to the exit, the daughter drops to the floor inside the store, continuing her fierce protest against her mother’s actions.
The clip ends after the woman and her daughter are seen standing next to an Atlanta police vehicle, still appearing to argue.
The melodramatic breakdown drew nearly 17 million views overnight on TikTok and tens of thousands of comments from viewers expressing shock by such a dramatic outburst.
“Full tantrum in store is egregious work ngl,” one person commented.”She would never get another phone from me again,” another person said, referencing what they would do in the mom’s shoes.
This generation is different—a little too different, if you ask me,” another comment said.
Earlier this year, a 13-year-old girl in Pennsylvania was charged for allegedly killing her mother after getting her cellphone taken away. The teen expressed “regret, guilt, and self-disgust” for stabbing her mother after they both reportedly argued about her cellphone use.
However, some commenters blame the Atlanta mother for the explosive interaction.
“Parents need to set limits on how much time their kids use any mobile device. They need to be reading more,” one person wrote on X.
Parents should monitor their children’s phone use as soon as they get their first one, according to clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour. When children ask for a phone, parents can set strict rules at first, which can be relaxed over time.
Damor told Parenting Magazine that it’s important for parents to look for signs of phone addiction in their teens.
“I would worry if a young person seems unable to regulate their emotions, or their ability to fall asleep at night, without access to a phone,” she said. “This can be prevented on the front end with some basic parameters around phone access, such as banning phones from bedrooms, meals, in-person family times, and so on. But if it’s too late and a young person has come to feel dependent on a phone in order to feel calm, that is something to be taken seriously.”
