More businesses require teens to be chaperoned by adults
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Wisdom.
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May 28, 2023 at 6:58 pm #300303
More businesses require teens to be chaperoned by adults
PARAMUS, N.J. (AP) — Jennifer Sepulveda used to drop off her 14-year-old son, Jorden, at the local mall on a Friday or Saturday night, where he would catch a movie with his friends and then hang out afterwards at the food court or elsewhere.
Not anymore.
Loitering, in other words.
Starting April 18, Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey — the second largest mall in the state — is requiring anyone under 18 years old to be accompanied by a chaperone at least 21 or older on Fridays and Saturdays after 5 p.m.
And…
Requiring an adult chaperone at malls, at least for certain times of the day, is not new. Mall of America, the nation’s largest shopping mall, imposed a chaperone policy back in 1996 and has been increasingly tightening it as recently as 2020 when it mandated that teens be accompanied by adults after 3 p.m. daily.
So it is nothing new.
But experts say Garden State Plaza joins a growing number of shopping centers, amusement parks and even a few restaurants that have implemented similar policies in the last few months ahead of the summer season. And they all cite increased incidents of bad behavior among teens as the reason…
And just look at how many stores in places like Chicago, San Fran, etc. see mob-shoplifting by such age groups.
Violent crime arrests among youth had actually been on the decline for years, falling to a new low in 2020…
Violent crime arrest… not the number of violent crimes committed!
The number of youth homicide victims, however, increased 30% from 2019 to 2020…
Chicago is famous for its youth/gang violence and homicides. So being pro-active sounds like a good idea!
Many praise chaperone policies as a way to reduce disruptions to business and create a safer shopping environment.
Which is true.
Having a parent there to make sure peer-pressure does not create a situation where you do something anti-social (shoplifting, unruly behaviour, etc).
But some critics say the new parental controls hurt teens’ independence and social development already curbed by pandemic-induced lockdowns.
Well, too many seem to not be mentally ready to be treated independently and as an adult.
Act like a spoiled unruly brat, and you will be treated like one. Hence the policies of champerones.
“We have to allow spaces for young people to be independent and develop socially beyond the context of the virtual digital environment,” said Jake Bjorseth, who runs trndsttrs, an agency helping retailers and brands understand and reach the Gen Z population.
How about school clubs? How about joining sport teams?
If you can’t act civilly in the classroom, in controlled places like school clubs/activities, or on sports teams, what makes you think they can unsupervised where peer pressure to do something bad can happen?
Meanwhile, several amusement parks with chaperone policies are generally requiring teens 15 years old or younger to be accompanied with adult chaperones after 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. every day. The largest group has been amusement park operator Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., which recently implemented adult chaperone policies for at least eight of its 13 parks including Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, Missouri, and King Dominion in Doswell, Virginia.
So it is not just at malls.
“Over the past two years, we have seen increasing incidents of unruly and inappropriate behavior across our industry and at other major entertainment venues,” said Gary Rhodes, a spokesman for Cedar Fair in a statement. “We believe these changes will help ensure that our parks continue to provide a safe and positive environment.”
At Worlds of Fun, for example, a fight involving more than 100 teenagers broke out during the park’s opening weekend in early April.
It is because of the behaviour of teens that these POLICIES ARE NEEDED!
Some businesses say the new rules have been effective.
The Mall in Columbia, in Columbia, Md., instituted a chaperone policy at the end of March after a rise in disruptive teen behavior over the past eight months, according senior general manager Mary Williams. She said that the weekend scene has turned into a pleasant family atmosphere because of it.
Yay, you want people to feel safe shopping there.
Noah Peters, district manager at three Capital 8 Theater locations in Missouri and Illinois, said that the chaperone policy implemented in Missouri in October 2021 requires teens under 17 to be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian after 6 p.m. And despite some outcry, it has been a “huge success,” citing anywhere from a 80% to 90% reduction in disruptive episodes.
“The reality is that the amount of money we lose turning those without a chaperone away pales to the amount we were losing providing refunds night after night to frustrated guests whose movie going experience was marred by the noise and disruptions,” Peters said.
Until these teens mature enough to NOT be unruly disruptive assholes to be allow out alone on weekends/evenings, enjoy your curfew. You have only yourselves (and fellow teenages) to blame).
May 28, 2023 at 7:02 pm #300306I have also witnessed, because of teen unruliness and thefts, see stores having a “limit” to the number of teens within their store (especially around lunchtime/right after school ends).
Stores and businesses are ADAPTING to the new reality.
Or they might do like others have in San Fran and Chicago… closed/moved shop completely.
May 29, 2023 at 12:34 am #300318This won’t fix anything, it’s not even a bandaid on a festering boil, but businesses have to do what they can to protect themselves. Teenagers have always been shitheads, it’s part of being a teenager. I did my share of stealing playboy and penthouse magazines, candy bars, bottles of alcohol, as a teen. Most do. It’s a phase you kind of have to go through and grow out of. Happened to me when I got caught stealing. I got to do 10 hours of community service, which was humiliating but most of it was spent sitting on my ass letting time pass, but I never stole again. Mainly because I had entered the next phase that lasted a year: drugs. It’s part of teenagers finding themselves, of emancipating themselves from the childlike fear of punishment, of satiating that inner predatory jungle instinct that wants to learn how to navigate risks and dangers… and then also eventually overcoming all that and becoming an adult.
You can’t take that away from kids, you can’t protect them from making mistakes. Or eventually, they’ll come up with their own challenges like eating tide pods. Or they won’t learn to control their animal urges and end up killing each other, when they get into their first fights with 17 instead of with 4. A lot of the crazed violence you see today is because kids don’t learn violence anymore. You don’t duke it out with your bully in school anymore. Kids grow up these days never having experienced a busted lip. They only know violence from games and tv, where it’s all cartoony. Then when it happens, they can’t control their instincts. 16 missed years of missed bloody noses and lips unload into an uncontrolled frenzy.Society effed up big with generation Z and Y. They don’t know how to fight. By that I don’t mean they don’t know how to throw a punch. They don’t know what it means to fight. They don’t know pain and thus they don’t know when to stop – like not stomping on someone’s head when they’re on the ground. They were never taught to be animals, so they never learned to be human either.
Society’s only answer seems to be to keep kids away from the opportunity to experience trouble. To protect them from themselves. No good will come from that.
Stores have to project themselves, but society needs to stop protecting its kids from everything – above all from themselves. Kids need to make mistakes in order to learn from them. It’s a lot worse if they only learn from their mistakes when they become adults.
May 29, 2023 at 7:29 am #300328Kids need to make mistakes in order to learn from them.
And that is exactly what this chaperoning will do.
Because of the unruly behavior of you (teenagers) and your peers, this is the result.
There are consequences for your actions.
Welcome to the real world.
May 29, 2023 at 9:22 am #300332This is just businesses trying to adjust to society rotting. I am sure it will help some surface issues but it won’t cure anything.
We have a dual issue with the young going on and it’s been going on for decades.
You have many parents whom see their child as only an accessory to themselves for one negative reason or another. These are the kids whom are not cared for, loved and most importantly taught. Typically these are fatherless households but not always. These poor kids are left to fend for themselves and will end up usually becoming drags on society.
Then you often times have the opposite of this. Parents whom guard their kids from all consequences. This is almost just as bad as the first group because it ends up in almost the same place where you have children whom are not learning life lessons. I think this is most parents now and I am guilty of this myself. But it’s as if because of our relative comfort and safety we over parent because this is where our instincts lead us not realizing we have to let them fail, fall and crash. I think a parent’s job is to not stop the falls, but just make sure we help them and show them how to get back up and learn from your mistakes when you do.
I remember years and years ago learning about how some American Indians would raise their kids. I recall an example of if a parent saw a child about to burn themselves on something hot in a fire they would let the child do it so they learned that was hot and not to do that again. The parent was just there to make sure they did not severely harm themselves in the process. Now a days some would consider this brutal but it’s really the way it should be in general.
May 29, 2023 at 11:49 am #300341That is excellent parenting. Make sure they don’t badly harm themselves, but let them learn their lesson on their own. Lessons learned ‘by thine own hand’ as opposed to those you are punished for, are those that stick. Because you have no one else to blame other than yourself. I.e. if you drive drunk and get a fine or lose your license for a month, chances of you doing it again are a lot higher than if you hit a tree and realize you almost killed yourself. Punishment can be necessary, but it can never replace the actual experience of learning responsibility through your own failures.
May 31, 2023 at 8:30 am #300438I’m sorry, but i completely disagree with this chaparone bullshit
Punishing an entire group for the actions of a few assholes is always wrong
And i can say by my own experience, being chaparoned around everyfuckingwhere by a parent was EXTREAMLY DETRIMENTAL to me growing up
You are not solving anything by forcing teens to be chaparoned, on the contrary, you are only making things worse
May 31, 2023 at 3:22 pm #300462“Punishing an entire group for the actions of a few assholes is always wrong” Such is the nature of collectivism. Individual rights are erased in the name of the common good.
The right will applaud it when it hits people they don’t like, same as the left. The right loves big governmetn or authoritarianism or collective punishment when it goes against gays, trans, black teens or muslims. Not so much when it goes against them.
“Cuz it ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.”
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