This digital poster presents a critical qualitative inquiry into an emergent and largely undocumented threat to academic integrity in hospitality management education. During a semester-end evaluation of final-year international hospitality students (n>15), a consistent and concerning pattern emerged: students were systematically prioritising practical, visually-driven instructional content from social media platforms, particularly TikTok, over institutionally provided learning modules for kitchen processes and food preparation. While students reported these methods were “easier,” required “less reading,” and produced demonstrably equivalent outputs, assessors consistently identified a critical deficit: a profound lack of procedural understanding regarding mandatory hygiene and safety standards. This paper argues that this phenomenon constitutes a novel form of academic misconduct – the misappropriation of professional competence – where the successful performance of a task is decoupled from the accredited knowledge that legitimises it, thereby undermining the integrity of the professional qualification itself. Unlike traditional plagiarism, this is not a theft of ideas but an algorithmic circumvention of the pedagogical process, enabled by the perceived authority and accessibility of social media knowledge. The poster offers two significant contributions. First, it theorises this behaviour as a socio-material integrity challenge, situated at the intersection of digital literacy, assessment design, and professional accreditation. Second, it proposes a future-driven, collaborative assessment model where students and educators co-design authentic assessments that leverage the engagement of social media pedagogies while embedding rigorous, non-negotiable professional standards and critical reflection. This approach reframes integrity not as compliance, but as a culturally embedded, professionally meaningful practice capable of adapting to a rapidly shifting technological landscape. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for identifying and responding to this emerging integrity threat in their own vocational contexts.