Why do some teens fight at malls?

It's the holiday season and despite the pandemic, people go to malls to shop and simply to hang out. Most of the time everything is peaceful and most young people are calm and courteous shoppers. But every year around the holidays there are incidents across the country involving large numbers of teens and outbreaks of fighting. Sometimes these incidents only involve the teenagers themselves but at other times other people get involved and become victims as well. In addition to fist fights, there are sometimes shootings and other forms of violence. Why does this occur and why are high school-aged kids usually involved?

Recent examples of this trend include a case in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin near Milwaukee, where 35 juveniles were engaged in a large fight in the Mayfair mall food court. Closer to home this September an incident occurred at our local Gurnee Mills mall, where large numbers of unruly kids congregated at the mall and were then pushed out of the buildings by police due to unsafe behavior. While the young people were waiting to be picked up by their parents in the parking lot, fights broke out. Last weekend in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Atlantic Station mall, massive fights broke out resulting in serious injuries to many kids and police found that the main aggressor was only 15 years old. These kinds of situations usually result only in citations (tickets) issued to the offenders who are then released to their guardians. Arrests are not common. Although these particular cases involved simple fist fights, other recent situations include shooting and sometimes murder. In Wauwatosa, Wisconsin another very recent incident occurred when a 15 year-old boy suddenly opened fire in the Mayfair Mall and injuring 8 people on November 20. This kind of tragedy is sadly not uncommon around the holidays.

How do malls respond? One method of reducing unruly teenage behavior in the stores is to require that adults to accompany their children to the mall around the holiday season. In other words no unaccompanied teens are allowed in the malls at certain times. Other methods include having curfews and increasing police and mall security presence. These methods certainly do help, but they also cannot fully prevent violence from breaking out.

In the end, the main question is why does teen mall violence seem to constantly break out and what can be done to stop it so that we are all safe during our mall shopping trips?

Questions: What do you think? Is social media responsible for many of these violent incidents? What responsibility do the teens and possibly their families have in preventing mall violence?