A lot of attention has been paid to youth violence over the past few years. Right here at home the Phoenix Police Department updated their Crime Reduction Plan earlier this month to include youth violence due to the perceived increase in attacks by and on children. The department’s goals include reducing the juvenile violent crime rate by 5%.
But has youth violence increased or are we just hearing more about it? Are group attacks becoming more common whereas in the past most altercations were one-on-one? And if youth violence has increased, why?
According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, by 2020 youth arrests for violent crimes had decreased by two-thirds since 2006 and 78% since peaking in 1994. However, according to a study by the National Center for Health Statistics, over the past 20 years youth homicide has increased 20%. Tragically, homicide is the third leading cause of death for people aged 10-24. It is the leading cause of death for African Americans of that age group and the second leading cause of death for Hispanics of that age group, according to Youth.gov.
Another source says serious violent crime among youths decreased 70% between 2021 and 2005 and that the frequency with which more than one assailant was involved has not greatly varied. However, federal data suggests that, between 2019 and 2020, homicides committed by lone minors increased 30% and homicides committed by two or more minors increased 66%.
So while youth violence may not be at its all-time high, some aspects of it appear to have increased over the past few years. I have a theory of what could have caused such an increase in youth violence between 2019 and 2020 – young people’s ever-increasing dependence on social media which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s no secret that the rise of social media ushered in an increase in youth bullying long before anyone knew what ‘social distancing’ meant. In the 1990s, kids who were picked on were at least able to escape to the safety (hopefully) of their homes. Today, the bullying continues. Even if the victim remains offline, they’ll hear everything that was shared the night before soon enough. For them, the torment never stops. This is likely one of the reasons youth suicide has increased a whopping 60% over the past two decades according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
Despite the dire statistics, today’s schools seem loath to get involved and the violence often spreads off school grounds. Parents have had to demand schools take action to protect their children after repeated bullying and threats of violence in person and over social media. In 2023, one Phoenix-area father asked his son’s high school to schedule a meeting between him, school officials, and the parents of his son’s bully to figure out a way to make the bullying stop. The school refused and his son was brutally beaten soon after. The beating was passed around on social media. Even after tens of thousands in medical bills from the assault, the threats against the teen continued.
It’s not only boys. While high school girls are usually less violent than their male counterparts, they are more likely to engage in, and be victims of, psychological bullying. Earlier this year, another Phoenix-area father had to threaten to take legal action against his daughter’s prestigious Catholic school to get them to do anything about the months of relentless bullying she had endured in person and via social media.
In 2017, multiple freshmen were sexually assaulted by upperclassmen on Chandler’s Hamilton High School football team. The assaults were shared on social media. Despite ample evidence that school officials, who are mandated reporters, knew the team was engaging in sexual assaults under the guise of ‘hazing,’ they did nothing.
But maybe it should be no surprise that the school system took no action since one of their own is the stepmother of one of the Gilbert Goons, the violent Phoenix-area gang I wrote about here and here. Jamie Lander was the principal of Riggs Elementary School in Gilbert when her stepson participated in a brutal beating at an area In-N-Out Burger as part of the Gilbert Goons. As usual, the beating was shared on social media. Like many of the Goons’ parents, it’s been alleged that Lander discouraged her stepson from cooperating with police investigations into the Goons and their multiple attacks. To date, the Goons have beaten one child to death and injured countless more. Most of their assaults are shared on social media. Lander has been reassigned.
There are innumerable stories like these being reported all over the country and it’s not confined to youth-on-youth violence. A few weeks ago a middle-aged couple in Chicago was attacked for sport by a group of teenagers. The kids’ ‘fun’ resulted in the woman suffering a miscarriage. A 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl are in custody. The group attack was coordinated via social media.
In Minneapolis, car jackings, many perpetrated by minors, increased more than 500% between 2019 and 2020.
While one of the incidents above happened before the pandemic, it’s no secret that today’s youth are spending more time online than they did just a few years ago and that many cities throughout the country are suffering from some form of increased juvenile delinquency.
Not only does social media allow for coordination of potential crimes, it is where perpetrators often ‘show off’ what they’ve done. For instance, there is a trend on TikTok to ‘prank’ strangers by… punching them and then posting a video online. If you fail to see the ‘prank’ in that you’re not alone. Even nonviolent (but incredibly cruel nonetheless) ‘pranks’ are popular on TikTok, such as grabbing people’s dogs and pretending to kill them.
A third issue brought on by the proliferance of social media is its impact on onlookers of violence. Years ago, if a large group of people witnessed a brutal group-on-one attack, someone would have intervened or called the authorities. Today, they film it and maybe offer help or call the cops after it’s over – often when it’s far too late.
It makes you wonder about the mental health of today’s youth and what impact social media and the lack of real world connection caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has had on them.
Would the Gilbert Goons engage in so many group attacks on helpless victims if they couldn’t gloat about it online later? Would they have more empathy in general if they hadn’t spent so much of their formative years in front of a screen instead of interacting with each other ‘IRL’? I have my theories but we’ll have to wait for scholars to release their studies years from now.
I just hope that, by the time they do, it’s not too late for today’s youth.
