AIBU to feel uneasy about teens congregating outside shops?

[fld]

Is it just me that I don’t feel comfortable with kids and teens congratulating outside shops so making it difficult for people to leave and enter.

Plus they swear.

This behaviour isn’t big or clever.

This was you OP.

Now your saying it’s like others describing with teens riding wheelies down the road on the wrong side and verbally abusing people and damaging their property.

So which is it?

Because he first one as you described is what we are responding to and I’m in the YABU camp.

However the second one isn’t ok and needs reporting to the police as it’s criminal behaviour and if you’d asked if you were Abu to be intimidated by this behaviour I’d have answered YANBU.

I suppose the wheelies are like a male bird displaying its plumage to attract the females

Well there were youth clubs but still kids hung outside shops. I don't see the issue tbh . If there's a group outside and I want to go in I say " excuse me lass" and they let me ask.

I don’t love it but normally a loud, assertive “Excuse me, please” with a confident smile (not an apologetic one) does the trick. And keep walking - they’ll part like the Red Sea for Moses.

I’m sure this display is irresistible…bless them.

Actually on the green opposite the local shops they built a shelter bench there literally for the teens to congregate

It's not always easy to know which of the two camps the groups fall into: whether they're just bored, hanging out and minding their own business; or if they're actively looking for trouble and are wanting to threaten or intimidate passers-by.

Just imagine how many more peacocks there would be in the world if they had ready access to spokey-dokeys

Oh my word!!!

I remember eating cereal everyday just to make sure I could get my next spoky dokey!!!!

Blimey!

We used to ask the pet shop owner to go to the offie next door for us, and he did! In retrospect, he was a pervert (lots of info came to light later on) and probably hoping to groom one of us 🤢

The problem is that a lot of teenagers are hard-wired to automatically reject what they 'should' do.

The very fact that there's a specific place or facility that's been designed and intended for them instantly makes it deeply uncool and to be avoided at all costs.

Our council went to great lengths to set up a specific teen-friendly 'hang out' place in the town centre... but the teens totally ignored it in favour of hanging around the kiddies' play park - just sitting on the swings staring at their phones and congregating around the edge of the trampoline - so the little ones couldn't get anywhere close to properly use the equipment; or lurking in the multi-storey car park, throwing things (often big heavy stuff) off the top level.

A group of teens does not stop me going into a shop, majority of the time they seem to move before I even have to excuse me and apologies for being in the way.
Most of these teens are good kids.

The people from various charity’s who camp outside shops are the ones who stop me going in!

So PP suggest that teens don’t want to do what people approve of? So start smiling , say hello you alright every time you go past them

In the 70s, we had 3 youth clubs in our town, Methodist, C of E and Catholic. They would compete for our custom. The Catholics won out because they had a record player and the priest could play guitar.

Chesterfield McD’s plays classical music. Heard of other places such as bus stations doing the same.

They don’t hang around in areas where the music is played

I can't bear how hostile it seems acceptable to be to teens. A group of kids hanging out aren't doing any harm. They are members of society with as much right to use public spaces as anyone else.

I'll admit, they shouldn't we swearing, but I wonder how much the op's negative attitude to them showed?

There's this myth that teens are awful, but I have teens and I work with teens, and I think they get an unfair reputation.

I love that idea!

There used to be a high-frequency sound which only young people could hear which some councils/shops used.

I don't think people are necessarily assuming the worst of them; but it is an unnerving thing to do.

If you saw a group of middle-aged or elderly people hanging about outside a corner shop - not really doing anything and engaging with each other and enjoying themselves, but just standing there in silence, or using bad and aggressive language, and staring at everybody walking past, I don't think most people would find that positive either. It's just that older people don't ever tend to do this.

I don’t understand why they hang around shops though.

Built not all groups of teens are doing this.

Many of them near shops here seem to be huddled round someone's phone watching videos

I think older people gather together to spend time with friends all the time and no one thinks anything of it. What the teens are doing is no different to when my elderly dm meets up with her walking group, but people just interpret it differently.

I'm just not sure it's unnerving, if you aren't assuming teens are up to something negative.

Free Wi-Fi.

Just use your "Mum voice" - breezy excuse me please
I ended up having a very interesting conversation about the merits of various donuts in sainsburys when I asked a group of black clad teenage boys to let me get to the display
Most of them who look scary arent really. My DS and his friends are very "naice" MC boys but they are all big and mostly wear black so you might well cross the road to avoid them.

I was in a McDonald's that was playing classical music.
The table with about 8 teens sat near me were discussing it and saying to each other what classical music they like.
It's hilariously patronising to think teens don't like classical music 😂

A lot of teens look scary but are mostly hugely self conscious and actually quite shy. Once a teenager in a group chucked a stone at my car as I drove past...I stopped, got out and shouted at him. He looked totally petrified and apologised!