Heather MacDonald, writing in City Journal, tells the story of novelist Scott Johnson having dinner at a restaurant in a mall outside of Richmond, Va., last March, when "hundreds of masked teens in black hoodies rushed past, only abruptly to change direction after receiving phone alerts about a brawl elsewhere in the mall." Johnson and his wife took shelter in a clothing store until the mall closed after rumors of shots being fired.
Johnson and his wife were terrified. They were victims of the growing urban sport of recreational rioting, or "Teen Takeovers." These are social media-driven swarms of urban youths who show up without warning and literally lose their minds, committing vandalism, getting into fights, and shooting at each other.
Authorities in California were forced to shut down businesses from Newport Pier to Pacific Coast Highway due to non-residents wreaking havoc on July 4th.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 5, 2026
Hundreds of people reportedly swarmed police officers and threw debris at them before fighting each other.
Newport Beach… pic.twitter.com/fWjZZpzgaU
🚨OH. MY. GOSH!!!
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) May 8, 2026
I received this video of a "teen takeover" that occurred in Chicago.
They are literally BURNING CARS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET and BLOCKING TRAFFIC.
Will ANYONE be arrested for this?!!!!
This looks like a 3rd world country, not America... pic.twitter.com/am4Gbm4QR0
"Children’s carnivals in Tinley Park, Illinois; Fairfield, Connecticut; Florence Township, New Jersey; and Maple Shade, New Jersey, have been canceled in response to mass disorder this year, as has a Houston rodeo," writes MacDonald. This one happened in a trampoline park:
🚨#BREAKING: Three North Carolina women are facing CRIMINAL CHARGES after a "teen-takeover" event at a trampoline park in Raleigh NC turned violent.
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) June 2, 2026
Kids were seen rioting, punching and kicking each other, and wrestling on the ground while adults encouraged the fighting.
During… pic.twitter.com/W8Y50E9RYg
“It’s honestly crazy,” one restaurant manager whose establishment was vandalized during a teen takeover told The Atlantic's Robert F. Worth. “We have regular conversations with staff about what to do if we get attacked—lock the doors; keep ourselves and the customers safe.”
As usual, the kids are blameless. Or not. Each side has its own explanation, complete with "experts" to comment on the rioting to buttress their arguments.
Explanation one: loneliness. The takeovers are “not random violence,” Samuel Abrams, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told NBC News in May. “It’s not out-of-control youth. More often than not, it is a desperate need for connection. … If you are a teen today, you grew up—or came of age—during Covid, when you were locked down,” Abrams explained. “Your social space is a screen; you are lonely; you are probably a little depressed. … You are desperate for human interaction and social contact. And when there’s a chance to gather and be part of something larger, we see teens flock to it.”
Explanation two: Covid. The pandemic created a mental-health crisis among teens, maintains Jasmin Ford, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and clinical instructor at the University of Illinois–Chicago. Young people missed key developmental milestones and now suffer from arrested development and the post-Covid loneliness identified by Abrams.
Explanation three: emotional neediness. “A lot of times when you see kids out here, it’s a cry for help,” a member of a Detroit community violence intervention group, The People’s Action, told WXYZ-TV in May.
When in doubt, trot out the explanation for everything bad that happens anywhere on planet Earth: poverty.
"One of the greatest stressors a family can face is being poor," Marilyn Luper-Hildreth, founder of Peace City, an Oklahoma nonprofit, told Oklahoma City’s Journal Record after a teen takeover at Arcadia Lake. Families need to be free from “worry[ing] about whether or not they’re going to feed their children or if OG&E is going to cut off their lights,” said Luper-Hildreth.
Poverty is horrible. But these aren't kids from the slums of Rio de Janeiro or Johannesburg. Due to the overall wealth of the U.S. economy, lower prices for consumer goods, and safety nets like SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid, the material floor in this country is much higher. The lowest income quintile in America generally has consistent access to electricity, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, television, and smartphones — luxuries that are still entirely absent for the poor in many developing regions.
I would point out to Peace City's Marilyn Luper-Hildreth that middle-class families worry just as much about electric bills and putting enough food on the table. It's a poor excuse for lawlessness.
Related: A Counterargument to the Campaign to Ban Smartphones for Kids
And don't forget about the "C" word as the primary reason for the teen takeovers.
Explanation six: capitalism. The takeovers are a “symptom of … capitalism,” suggested Robyn Vincent, host on a Detroit National Public Radio station. Instead of being “built for kids,” American cities were “built for spending money, they’re built for consumerism.” They were “not necessarily built for free safe spaces where people can commune and convene.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, when he was still a Cook County commissioner, blamed corporate profits for the looting that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020. Asked to clarify remarks that appeared to excuse the unrest, Johnson told a local television station: “There’s no way to, to, to embrace that. What I’m saying is you can’t condone the looting that corporations continue to do every single day when they take tax dollars from black, brown, and white folks all over the city of Chicago so they can turn a profit. The fact that Jeff Bezos pays a lesser tax rate than people that are seeking employment—that’s a wicked system. That type of looting has to be disrupted as well. That’s what we’re calling for in this moment.”
Teen takeovers stem from out-of-control children in need of good parenting and discipline. Failing that, a "zero tolerance" attitude by the police is necessary to regain control of the streets. Terrified, cowardly mayors and city elites need to grow a pair and do the hard, unpopular things necessary to govern.
It isn't hunger that drives these kids to destroy people and property. It's a lack of self-restraint born out of emerging from broken homes, broken schools, and broken government. They're in control now and will be until someone shows them otherwise.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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