Sociologists use the term ‘third spaces’ to describe places that are neither home nor work—informal environments where people can gather, relax, build relationships, and feel part of a community.

As a researcher on a previous research project, I worked with teenagers in the North of Ireland to study youth-led spaces and young people’s right to express their views. The organization they belonged to, the Northern Ireland Youth Forum, provided an incredible formal space. But when we walked across the street to the mall for lunch, I got to know them on a deeper level.

Over burgers and milkshakes, they gossiped about school drama, then seamlessly shifted to planning an upcoming presentation to the United Nations.

There’s a reason nearly every coming-of-age movie includes a scene at a mall, diner, or fast-food joint. These spaces offer what formal programs often can’t: unstructured time, low stakes, and relative freedom from adult oversight. They allow young people to socialize without spending much money, and without being managed.

In many communities, especially rural or low-income ones, these are the only places teens can access without a car, a membership fee, or constant supervision. This matters because only 13% of LGBTQ+ young people report feeling “very supported” in their in-person environments, revealing just how rare affirming physical spaces already are. Fast-food restaurants near schools function as de facto after-school centers. Malls become climate-controlled refuges during heat waves and winter cold.

When those spaces disappear, something critical goes with them.

Today, I’m a Policy Intern at Hopelab, a doctoral researcher in children’s rights, and a professor of Childhood and Youth Studies at Brooklyn College. When I designed my syllabus for my first semester, I knew I wanted to spend time on adolescence, specifically its positionality as a political and social experience.

Around the same time in February 2024, Atlantic Terminal Mall in Brooklyn implemented a policy banning unaccompanied minors during most business hours. I couldn’t stop thinking about my own teenage years, or the growing cultural panic around today’s young people: the ‘Sephora kids,’ the nostalgia for a 1990s childhood, and the growing obsession with landline phones as a symbol of a simpler past

When we discussed the Atlantic Terminal Mall ban in my Human Rights of Children course, my students brought their own experiences. Several were freshly 18 or 19 and remembered being stopped by security at Atlantic Terminal and asked for ID. One student shared that just weeks earlier, his younger sister and her friend had been told to leave the mall, which was the place she relied on to hang out after school.

As the semester went on, we dug deeper into what it means to be a teenager in public spaces. We talked about how Black and Brown young people are forced to grow up faster, are read as adults by society sooner, and are punished more harshly for behaviors that are dismissed as “kids being kids” when white youth do them.

One afternoon on my walk to class, I passed the McDonald’s I walk by every day and saw a new sign in the window:

UNDER 18 NOT ALLOWED FROM 2–7 PM WITHOUT A CHAPERONE.

The McDonald’s in Flatbush, a predominantly low-income neighborhood in Brooklyn, had joined Atlantic Terminal Mall in banning teenagers during the exact hours that young people in this Brooklyn neighborhood depend on for an affordable after-school snack, dinner, or simply a warm, indoor place to be with friends.

Teen bans are almost always justified as responses to isolated incidents. But the policies themselves are sweeping and indiscriminate, applying to all young people regardless of behavior.

In practice, this means entire communities of young people are excluded from public life because of the real or anticipated actions of a few.

At Atlantic Terminal Mall, multiple overlapping restrictions were imposed even as employees and officials struggled to point to recent incidents serious enough to warrant them. Teens are described as “loud,” “annoying,” or “lingering”—rarely as dangerous. And for LGBTQ+ young people—especially those in rural or hostile environments—public space is already precarious: only 9% report feeling “very safe” expressing their identity in person, compared to 44% online, where distance offers protection.

These bans are not just about safety. They are rooted in ageism and structural racism. They frame young people as problems to be managed rather than people with a right to exist in public space.

While written in age-neutral language, these policies are anything but neutral in impact.

They disproportionately affect Black and Brown teens, who are more likely to be surveilled, questioned, and removed. In Hopelab’s recent LGBTQ+ Report, only 17% of LGBTQ+ youth in rural areas described their in-person environments as “very kind” highlighting the urgent need for safe physical spaces.

Paid extracurriculars, private hangout spaces, and organized programs are luxuries, not guarantees, particularly in rural communities. Rural young people report a lower sense of life purpose than their suburban or urban peers (48% vs. 57%), a gap linked to limited access to education, career pathways, and community spaces. When public spaces close their doors, belonging becomes conditional, and autonomy becomes something reserved for adults.

Many bans cite theft or disruptive behavior. But age-based exclusions deepen patterns of over-criminalization that Black, Brown, and Queer teens already face.

Normal adolescent behavior becomes grounds for removal and often, police involvement. Surveillance replaces relationship-building. Punishment replaces prevention.

Civil liberties advocates have raised concerns about whether some of these bans violate laws protecting access to places of public accommodation. Even when technically legal, they raise serious ethical questions about dignity, fairness, and collective responsibility.

The answer to discomfort with teenagers in public is not exclusion. It is investment.

Some communities are choosing a different path: creating spaces designed with and for young people. Youth hubs, drop-in centers, and teen-centered community spaces offer models grounded in trust rather than control.

Casper Youth Hub in Wyoming is one example. In a rural state with few options, it is working to provide Wyoming’s first third space for teenagers to connect, rest, and build skills without being treated as liabilities. By employing local youth as paid research fellows, Casper Youth Hub is ensuring this space is co-created with the young people it aims to serve.

Gael Aitor, a Young Innovators in Behavioral Health grantee, is part of another example of the growing movement of young people designing connection and support from lived experience, demonstrating that youth are not just recipients of investment, but leaders of it.

Gael leads Grownkid, a NYC social club for 18–24 year olds that teaches life and social skills through play, creativity, and community. From boxing raves to wrestling-themed speed dating and citywide freeze tag games, Grownkid creates space for learning and belonging without formal labels, meeting young adults where they are and reminding us that connection is a skill that can be practiced together.

Together, these efforts show the power in a response rooted in partnership rather than restriction. From joy-filled convenings to immersive theater to card games and toolkits that travel wherever young people gather, the common thread is human connection. The Rithm Project builds the intergenerational leadership force needed to reclaim and evolve connection in the age of AI—transforming insights from their research and network into compelling content and experiences that help young people become champions for human connection, able to use technology to strengthen rather than erode belonging.

The lesson is clear: when we build spaces with young people, everyone benefits.

When we talk about teen mental health, we often focus on therapy, crisis lines, and classroom interventions. All of those matter, but they miss something quieter and just as essential: the everyday spaces where young people learn how to be human together.

As a teenager, I didn’t have those spaces. I went from school to work to home. I didn’t realize what I was missing until I briefly tasted it elsewhere: wandering malls in cities that weren’t mine, eating fast food with teens I’d just met after speaking at their schools, slipping into versions of teenage life that felt ordinary to them and extraordinary to me. Those moments made the absence back home sharper.

When teens are barred from public spaces, they lose opportunities to practice autonomy in low-stakes ways, such as deciding where to go, who to be with, and how long to stay. They lose places to decompress after school, to talk through friendships and heartbreaks, to feel temporarily unobserved. For teens who are Black, Brown, Queer, low-income, or already navigating hostility in other parts of their lives, these small freedoms matter even more.

When we shrink the world available to teenagers, we don’t make them safer. We make them lonelier. We increase isolation, reinforce the message that youth are problems to be managed, and cut them off from the informal social learning that supports mental health long before a crisis point.

If we are serious about supporting the well-being of young people, we have to stop treating third spaces as expendable. Teenagers do not need fewer places to go. They need more places where they are allowed to exist—messily, loudly, imperfectly—and where belonging is not something they have to earn.