Last week, I noticed my son scrolling TikTok (ugh), watching harmless Valentine’s Day trends. You know the stuff: roses, candy hearts, and goofy couples challenges… when some clips caught my eye. Not because they were unsettling, but because once he scrolled past selfies and chocolate hacks, he landed on more videos that, for lack of a better term, influence behavior. Mostly harmless. Or are they?
Perhaps I didn’t fully understand the power of social media influence until he headed off to Target to get the roses and candy hearts, determined to participate in whatever algorithm-approved ritual passes for relevance this week.
So, of course I immediately associate this phenomenon with the recent rash of crimes sensationalized on these platforms. Suddenly it’s not such a stretch to connect the dots between the rise in smash & grabs, self-checkout confessions, and flash mobs to the viral ecosystem that rewards despicable behavior with views, likes, and whatever dopamine-fueled engagement exists nowadays.
These aren’t isolated clips; social media has turned what used to be old-school shoplifting into shareable theater performances. In Los Angeles, a mob ransacked a convenience store during a street takeover that was apparently part of a planned social media stunt. In the UK, police warned that viral shoplifting challenges were spreading on TikTok.
Are you prepared for these threats with your current tech and solutions? The awkward pause is real. I’m not suggesting they are obsolete. We still need technology, patrols, and solid fundamentals. None of that goes away. Those tools matter. But they are reacting to symptoms, not targeting the root cause.
Social media didn’t invent dishonesty. But it turned it into content. Attention changed the game. When someone records themselves running off with unpaid merchandise, and that clip gets thousands of views and likes, the incentive isn’t consequence, it’s visibility. We’re watching theft go viral, and we’re still trying to solve it with the same playbook we used before phones had front-facing cameras.
Traditional loss prevention tools are necessary, but they weren’t designed for threats that live on timelines and reels. We keep asking, “How do we catch them?” when a better question might be, “How do we make honesty more appealing than virality?” If people are performing theft for attention, then maybe prevention needs to show up where attention lives.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to build a better mousetrap. But locks, gates and guards get bypassed. Social media doesn’t. Influence shapes behavior in ways that technology never could. Influencers have already proven they can move public sentiment across brands, causes, and entire cultural moments. Why wouldn’t we explore whether that influence can be enlisted to deter theft, promote respect for community, and make doing the right thing feel shareable too?
This isn’t about turning retailers into marketing machines. It’s about recognizing that behavior today is shaped outside the store long before someone reaches for ten jugs of Tide. If threats are evolving because attention fuels them, then our response needs to evolve, too.
Stop pretending the next swipe or trend won’t matter. It already does.
Retail can keep reinforcing doors, hiring guards, tuning surveillance. That’s smart. But going against the grain means stepping into the places where the next generation’s behavior is actually being formed. Because if social media can fuel a trend of theft, it can fuel an entirely different trend where community and accountability get just as much attention as chaos.
Agree? Disagree? Good. Let’s hear it.