Yes, children (and adults) enter stores just to wreck electronics

The story that has been going around is that the new iPhone 6 Plus hardware can literally be bent out of shape. This claim has gained a large amount of traction, and Apple has responded to say that the issue is rare, with a low number of actual complaints. Consumer Reports tested the phones and found that it took 110 pounds of pressure to separate the phone from its case.

So of course some kids decide to film themselves going into an Apple store and destroying phones. Because that's fun. It's also hard to watch, and I'm not sure anyone involved with filming or uploading this little adventure realized how far it would go, or how clueless it makes the children look. The video has been making the rounds, and in case you haven't seen it, here you go:

They admit that they might have to pay for the phones they destroyed if they were caught, so they had to wreck the phones and get out quick. Very clever, outside of the whole "video the destruction of someone else's property and release it on YouTube" bit.

This happens all the time

Here's the thing, this behavior isn't rare. I spent a large part of my younger years in electronics retail, and it's rather common to see children, and in some cases adults, try to wreck demo hardware to make a point, or to see if they can. I once came out of the back room to see a teenager take the stylus from a Nintendo DS and, with a downward stabbing motion, try to break the screen.

His response was to tell me that he had to see if he could kill a pixel, or if the screen broke. I'm not sure if he was happy that it didn't, but when I told him I was calling the police, he left pretty quickly.

People will pick up electronics and bend them, or try to stab them or scratch them, or all other kinds of torture tests to try to prove some point. I once had to deal with a group of college kids who tried to destroy a PlayStation Portable because, according to one of them, he wanted to show his friends how fragile they were. His way of doing so was to find a unit in a store, and just kind of break it on purpose.

This happened more times than I could count. Another time, someone thinking about buying a Game Boy Advance SP asked to see one, and then he began to slam it with a surprising amount of force into the counter, over and over. He was testing its "durability," and I have to wonder about the use case he was worried about.

This isn't exactly what demo units are for, and it's a little bit shocking to think that's a thing that has to be explained. I was seeing someone at the time who also worked in retail, and she complained about the number of people who would defecate in changing rooms, which taught me to never complain about my job.

This sort of behavior is common, especially with electronics, and it's depressing how often customers feel the need to break something to justify their dislike of it.

So yeah, don't do that.