Have you heard the news? The teens are coming, the teens are coming! Batten down the hatches, because broccoli-haircut-headed hordes of zoomers are coming to town. Petty crimes and “Fortnite” dances are sure to abound as youngins’ descend on a mall parking lot near you.
The trend of teenagers gathering at malls and other public areas and milling about like Sims, otherwise known as “teen takeovers,” has finally made it to Houston. For the unaware, these takeovers usually start with a flyer on social media inviting young people to gather in a public space and hang out. Sometimes influencers and artists will show up, and in some cases, they’ve gotten violent, a fact conservative outlets like Fox News love to point out.
Ahead of last weekend, AI-generated fliers online began advertising a takeover of the Katy Mills Mall on May 2. This resulted in a flurry of TV news stories where scruffy-looking constables assured the public the situation was under control. The teens showed up, nobody was arrested, nothing was vandalized, and life went on.
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Things got a little bit more panicked at Willowbrook Mall, which instituted a temporary curfew policy for last weekend and this upcoming one. Mallrats 17 and under will be required to be accompanied by a supervising adult 21 or older after 2 p.m. until closing. Memorial City Mall followed suit, putting a similar “temporary youth curfew” starting May 9, from 10 a.m. until closing and May 10, from 11 a.m. For their part, Willowbrook officials told Chron reporter Ahmed Humble that their curfew was “very effective,” though the mall didn’t elaborate.
Some of these teen meet-ups have indeed gotten violent and rambunctious, especially after dark. Flyers can be made easily with AI and spread online via Instagram and TikTok, meaning that hundreds of young people show up to these things, upping the chance that troublemakers will show up. And private businesses like Willowbrook and Memorial City Malls are well within their rights to protect their property and enact policies they believe will mitigate damage. But I would argue that things like curfews and heightened police presences are exactly the reason teen takeovers are so popular to begin with.
Memorial City Mall joins Willowbrook in limiting unsupervised teens after safety concerns
Brett Comer (Houston Chronicle – 2019) /Getty Images
Teens? At the mall? The horror!
It’s not that long ago that teenagers going to the mall alone was normal. I was born in 2000, so I missed much of the 1980s and ’90s mall craze, but my friends and I still hung out at Post Oak Mall in College Station, Texas. We’d wander around, go to Hot Topic, buy pretzels, get piercings at Claire’s and look at swords at those weird sword and knife stores.
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Why did we go to the mall? Because it was one of the few places where I didn’t have to pay to get in. The bowling alley was reserved for birthday parties. I couldn’t go to a bar, and we rarely could afford to eat at a restaurant until I got a job. I hadn’t yet gotten enough homework to need to study at a coffee shop, so the mall it was. Sure, buying stuff costs money, but window shopping is free. If Post Oak had had one of those “temporary youth curfews,” I’m not sure what my scene friends and I would’ve done on a weekend in the blistering hot summer. Still, malls around the country have followed suit and instituted various restrictions on teenage visitors.
And what about curfews? They’ve always been around to various extents, and my mother always told me when I’d go to a movie, the mall, or to hang out at a friend’s house that “nothing good happens after midnight” (did Chappell Roan and I have the same mom?). But cities around the country, in recent years, have instituted various curfews to reduce “youth-based crime” and labeled anyone out later than that a criminal. (Not to mention that many teenagers and youth advocates have argued that these curfews feel pointed at Black and Hispanic teens).
Students take over he newly completed Warwick Arts Centre at the University of Warwick, shortly before being officially opened. 8th October 1974
Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
“Have a little fun, get outside.”
Those are the mundane. Consider the mostly isolated and extreme but still upsetting stories of parents being hassled and, in some cases, arrested for “reckless endangerment” because police found their child wandering around unsupervised, only for it to turn out their kid was going for a walk somewhere. I walked and biked to the park or my friend’s houses all the time, and while my parents didn’t always know where I was, they were hardly endangering me. This, of course, comes even though many online right-wingers bemoan the golden days when kids could run around and do The Sandlot.
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Put yourself in the mind of somebody born in the very late 2000s. If you were born in, say, 2009, you’d be 17 now. Much of your formative, early schooling years, when you’re supposed to learn social skills, were disrupted by a global pandemic that forced you into isolation, spending most of your time at home on Zoom. A ton of teens now say that social media, as opposed to the real world, is where they feel like they can most express themselves and find support even as they simultaneously say that social media can make them feel bad about themselves. It’s no wonder that many young people look outside and feel the need for more interpersonal connections.
“Young people get together like this because you got the clubs 21 and up, man,” Tyrone Crest, a 19-year-old DC-based content creator, told Vox of the teen takeovers. “The adults could go out and have fun on the weekends and enjoy themselves, right? So what we do is we basically try to get everybody to come together, enjoy themselves, you know what I’m saying? Have a little fun, get outside.”
In other words, if you’d like these teens to stop “taking over” random shopping malls and public spaces, give them somewhere to go. If you’d like kids and teens to stop seeming so prudish or averse to partying, give them the ability to screw up and explore, within reason. Let’s urge our civic institutions to do as the cities of Detroit and Washington D.C. did and, instead of arresting and scolding teens, listen to their concerns and figure out what it is they really need. I’m not saying to turn a blind eye to crime or vandalism. But a critical mass of young people is getting together in urban spaces and suburban parking lots to tell us something. We’d all do well to listen.
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