Starting a few months ago, every Friday and Saturday at 5:00pm all cops at the Christiana Mall are going to ask all teenagers who look to be 18 years old, or younger to show their ID. If you are without your ID, and aren’t being chaperoned by a parent, you have to leave the mall. Christiana Mall has joined 54 other malls nationwide putting the policy into effect. This is called the Parental Guidance Required Program; and teenagers are outraged by it. Including me. I think this new rule is completely absurd and useless. I know I’m not the only one who feels this though.
Many teenagers are starting petitions online against the new rule, and protesting. Not all teenagers go to the mall to hang out and cause trouble. Some of them actually do just want to go to shop. I feel that it’s one of those situations where all the bad teens pretty much ruined it for the kids that do just want to shop without their parents hovering over them. Some of the teenagers wouldn’t have minded, but the fact they must stay with their parents at all times during the mall made them upset. I know most teenage boys for the fact, wouldn’t want to go shopping with their mom. Tyler O'Neill, 14, said he likes to go to the mall and walk away from his mother. He said: "She goes to the Starbucks and Bath and Body Works, I went to EB Games and Hot Topic. Now I'd have to go with her."
Parents don’t even like this rule. Alex Major, 16, says: "My mom works all day, She comes home and sleeps. When I come home from school I'm loud - I want to stomp up and down the steps, play my games, so she always sent me to the mall. She wasn't happy about it at all." Some parents complain that: “I’m even worried when I leave the mall to get to my car with teenagers hanging around!” Well; news flash: now-a-days its not completely safe anywhere. Someone could easily get killed, or violated by just simply walking through the park on a summer day alone. Sadly, that’s just how the world is today. So that shouldn’t have even been a complaint. And A teenager, or a group of teenagers, aren’t even that threatening really. I mean, if you were walking to your car around 7:00pm when it starts to get dark; id worry more of if a single man or woman would do something to me. Not a group of teenagers, or one or two.
I understand they want to make it a more family environment, but they could do that many other ways then this. Because really: if there are a few teenagers hanging around they aren’t going to mess around with a family walking by. They’re too busy doing what they’re doing to even pay attention. But even if a family wanted to go shopping at lets say, 6:00pm on a Monday there could still be teenagers there with their friends regardless.
My opinion on this: it is completely useless, senseless, and belligerent. I’m going through this too. I can no-longer go to the mall on a Friday night with my friends, or a Saturday afternoon due to the new rule. And personally, I feel that Friday should be a day you should have fun or relax because it’s the last day of school before the weekend. And that may include going to the mall. Or, if it’s a Saturday afternoon and you want to go to the mall with a few of your friends to buy clothes for school or something, you can no longer do that without an adult. Which is pretty silly if you ask me. Because like I said before, not all teenagers go to the mall to cause trouble.
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