A TikToker who goes by Bri (@briannatorrr) posted a viral TikTok highlighting how her local Target is deciding to curb teenage hooligans from messing about in its store: Anyone under the age of 16 needs to be with an adult.
It’s been reported that other Target stores have implemented similar rules.
“No more walmart activities at target!!!!” a text overlay reads on the photo of the sign at Target.
The sign in question states, “AFTER 6 P.M. ALL GUESTS UNDER THE AGE OF 16 MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT.”
One person who responded to the video said at their local Target, a worker approached them about the curfew policy: “They’re being so serious, my friends and i were standing around deciding what size hola hoop to get and a worker asked where our adult was, we’re 20 and we were talking abt car payments.”
Why the need for a curfew?
Another commenter remarked that youngsters running amok in the Target store they visit has become a persistent problem: “Mine is ALL day.. they legit have security at the door to check ID.”
Another requested that this rule be implemented across each and every of the retailer’s locations while someone else wished other stores would follow suit.
“Ulta and Sephora need to do this,” one wrote, seemingly referencing the “epidemic” of children perusing the makeup stores.
For whatever reason, some Target stores have become loitering hot spots for teens, like one employee shared in the r/Target sub: “Yesterday I had a customer come up and tell me there were multiple teens in the paper aisles playing catch with the toilet paper,” they penned.
This post, uploaded a year ago, seemed to open the floodgates of negative commentary toward adolescents and teenagers wreaking havoc in Target stores: “Throwing balls, riding bikes, messing up zones …. other than that they’re little angels,” one person remarked.
Another said they even go so far as to ruin merchandise: “Last summer we had an older group of teenagers f*cking around on the smallest pre-built kids bikes. Bent one of the tires damn near in half, ditched the bike and ran away laughing. F*cking punks.”
One Redditor shared the “100%” effective methodology they follow to deal with the problematic teenagers is threatening to call the cops if they don’t chill.
Target’s not the only retailer that has implemented restrictions with sending children into stores without adult supervision—another Redditor who works at Gamestop complained about not being able to legally sell games to kids under the age of 13, but the title of the post seemed to hint at general young kid behavior being a problem in stores: “Can’t stand parents who send their children into the store unattended while they shop elsewhere.”
NBC 4 pointed out the “madhouse” atmosphere that would erupt on Friday and Saturday nights at the popular Garden State Plaza Mall located in Paramus, New Jersey, which banned teenagers from entering the mall without being accompanied by a parent. Reports of flash mobs running through the establishment with security guards in tow, and fights breaking out were behind the mall’s decision to implement curfew rules.
The same NBC article references a Pennsylvania Chick-fil-A franchise that implemented a similar curfew, and wrote that while “violent crime arrests” have ultimately declined in recent years, the number of youth deaths has spiked dramatically between 2019 and 2020, which was the largest “one-year increase since at least 1980.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Target via email and Brianna via TikTok comment.
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