A social media post. Thousands of teens. Then chaos

America recently turned 250, with parades, cookouts and fireworks. But in city after city, another kind of gathering was drawing thousands of teenagers, some with dire consequences.

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A 19-year-old was killed and many others were injured in Pensacola, Florida, during the Fourth of July weekend. In South Carolina, a female police officer was physically assaulted by multiple teens who only appeared to let her go after being restrained by law enforcement. And in Raleigh, North Carolina, multiple shootings occurred in one night with numerous injuries, creating a scene that Raleigh Police Chief Rico Boyce said he had never seen anything comparable to in his 26 years in law enforcement.

On the other side of the country in California, a mob of teens took over Newport Beach on Independence Day, forcing businesses to close down in order to protect themselves from what looked like a riot of chaos and destruction.

“Teen takeover” has become the catch-all term for large, youth-organized gatherings that have spread across pockets of the country. In some locations, they are referred to a sidehows.

But this issue didn’t just spark over the holiday weekend.

With summer break keeping students out of the classroom, many cities have seen the teen crowds grow larger, the incidents become more frequent and, in some cases, the consequences turn more serious.

The problem has gotten so bad that U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro told parents back in May to discipline their children or the federal government would do it. She also said parents would be held criminally responsible for their child’s actions. Other state leaders have threatened legal punishment, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Cities like Washington, D.C., and Chicago have also implemented “juvenile curfew zones” in hopes of deterring such takeovers.

Even so, America’s youth don’t seem to be backing down.

The kids are not all right

It starts with a post on social media. A date and time are set. And what is promoted as a party quickly turns into havoc.

The gatherings take place in public settings where it seems the participants have no regard for the community infrastructure or public safety.

Like a scene pulled from a DC Comic, videos online show teens across the country destroying private businesses, targeting cars with fireworks and attacking law enforcement officers and pedestrians.

In response to the takeovers, cities have canceled events, public beaches have been closed, and some businesses have been left wary of opening their doors.

Though Utah has not faced the brunt of the takeover trend, a 16-year-old Utahn recently said she and her friends purchased live goldfish and threw them into car windows as they drove down the road, to watch the fish flop on the dashboard and freak out the unsuspecting drivers.

A group of “young adults” in Kaysville allegedly started a fire with ”bottle rocket-style fireworks” and, instead of calling 911, fled the scene. The Syracuse Police Department recently shut down a potential teen takeover and asked parents to communicate with their children about their plans.

The Salt Lake City Police Department told the Deseret News that though it has not experienced such events, it’s aware of the national trend and remains prepared.

“We are keeping an eye on the large-scale events playing out across the country. Our focus is on enforcing the law to create a safe environment for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians in our city. We encourage all community members to join us in that effort,” a statement from SLCPD said.

Many teen takeovers, including the large one in Newport Beach that had more than 400 arrests, turned out to involve kids who were not actually from the local area. Many were reportedly from surrounding states, including Arizona and Nevada.

Teen safety expert Katey McPherson told Arizona news outlet AZ Family that she wasn’t shocked to hear 145 of the individuals arrested were from Arizona.

“Looking at this scene, you saw mostly males, some using substances, and all of them had phones out recording and validating the destruction,” McPherson added. “The more destructive, the more looting, more fighting, more graphic and profane and explicit it was, the more street cred they get.”

Social media-fueled phenomenon

The videos often show the same pattern: a crowd forms, someone pushes the limits, others follow, and chaos ensues. Experts say that’s not a coincidence. Adolescents are wired to seek acceptance from their peers, and in large groups — especially those fueled by social media — individual judgment can give way to mob mentality, making risky or destructive behavior more likely, licensed psychologist Amanda Stoeckel explained.

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Stoeckel, who also serves as the program manager/clinical director for the University of Utah’s youth Comprehensive Assessment and Treatment Program, told the Deseret News that social media is the amplifying force behind the teen takeover trend.

She explained that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for planning and impulse control, is still developing, while the limbic system, which manages emotion and reward, is highly active in adolescents.

“Social media really amplifies this contrast in terms of brain development in adolescence,” Stoeckel said, adding to the need for real-world connection.

“Social media platforms have been very strategic in terms of using algorithms to create this sense of urgency,” she said, of that natural desire youth have for peer connection. Once teens gather, the group dynamic can temporarily override their “discrepancy from their values and their identity development” as they become caught up in the momentum that originated online — what Stoeckel described as “deindividuation.”

She credited Utah as being at the forefront of state efforts to regulate social media companies and protect minors online. Utah became the first state in 2023 to enact broad restrictions on youth social media use, also culminating in a first-in-the-nation 2025 law requiring app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before minors can download apps. Several of those laws, however, remain tied up in litigation.

But each year, Stoeckel said, the laws become “fortified and made stronger. I think it comes back to collaboration and open communication with our youth and with parents in our community.”

Parents should be vigilant about asking their children what their social media feeds are showing them, Stoeckel said, adding that conversations should remain nonjudgmental.

“If they ever do find themselves in a public space where a crowd is developing, and they’re feeling unsafe,” she said, it’s important that they know they can call their parent.

She continued, “I do also wonder about creating safe spaces for youth to congregate and talk about mental health concerns and continuing to invest in spaces where mental health needs are being addressed and where they’re easily accessible.”

When social isolation meets social media

Samuel Abrams, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said that these takeovers should sound the alarm that America’s youth need connection.

“It’s not out-of-control youth,” Abrams said, per City Journal. “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.”

He continued, “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.”

A 2025 World Health Organization report found that 1 in 7 10- to 19-year-olds deals with some sort of mental health disorder, and that anxiety and depression are among the most common mental disorders experienced by youth.

The report also highlighted that “physical, emotional and social changes, including exposure to poverty, abuse, or violence, can make adolescents vulnerable to mental health problems.”

Experts have drawn connections between the rise of teen takeovers and a broader social disengagement among young people, particularly from school.

“As of 2024, chronic absenteeism rates were still 57 percent higher than pre-pandemic levels. D.C. has one of the highest rates in the country; in a quarter of the city’s public high schools, more than 70 percent of students are chronically truant, meaning they have 10 or more unexcused absences in a school year,” per The Atlantic.

Derrick Johnson, a freelance crime reporter in D.C., told The Atlantic that he believes the increase in truancy, combined with social media use among young people, has helped fuel the takeover phenomenon.

“There’s something different about this generation,” Johnson said. “They don’t want to listen to anybody.”

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