Are Kids a Problem at the Mall?

Last Tuesday there was a non-fatal stabbing of a teenage boy in the parking lot of the The Mall in Columbia outside of Baltimore. As a result I was contacted by the reporters for The Baltimore Sun and asked if kids are a bigger problem in malls today than in the past.

As someone who worked in The Sharper Image, a teen magnet store if there ever was one, I definitely have experience with kids and malls. Personally, I don’t see a difference between a Friday night at the mall in 2008 and a Friday night at the mall in 1998. Ever since the malling of America began and many downtowns up and died, malls have become the new hangout for kids.

In the article A coarser world invades mall life, Paco Underhill agreed that the violence that happened at the Columbia mall could happen anywhere. "It could have happened in a school parking lot," said Underhill, CEO of Envirosell in New York City. "The fact that it happened at the mall is testament to it being the town center."


What’s really changed are the youth themselves. When I was a teenager we settled our differences with fists. Okay, I didn’t but I knew guys who did. Today’s youth are more likely to use knives or guns than fists. Obviously it is a very small group of kids who create the problems but the question to be asked is if these kids more prone to violence have a negative impact on the malls?

I believe that we are as safe at a mall as at any other public venue, but when violence happens at a mall it’s more disturbing to use because it breaks our sense of security. So the greater challenge for malls isn’t necessarily teenagers, but the perceptions of teenagers by other shoppers.

So let me ask, do you think kids are a bigger problem for malls today than they were in the past?