UK Police Urge Parents to Stop Their Children From Urban Exploring

Police across the U.K. are warning parents about the dangers of urban exploration photography as more children enter abandoned buildings in hopes of going viral on social media.

For many photographers, urban exploration offers a way to document the forgotten beauty and hidden history of abandoned buildings before they disappear. But the people drawn to urbex are changing, according to multiple reports. The genre has found a large audience on social media — particularly TikTok and, to a lesser extent, Instagram. As a result, urbex is attracting a younger generation of explorers — including children — who are willing to take greater risks by entering abandoned and potentially dangerous sites to create content that could go viral and attract followers.

Police forces and local authorities across the U.K. are urging parents to warn children about the potential dangers and legal consequences of urban exploration photography.

Northamptonshire Police, which serves the county of Northamptonshire in central England, issued a warning after several incidents in recent months involving young people entering abandoned or derelict buildings. The incidents, some of which involved broken bones, occurred during the school summer vacation amid a rise in children and teenagers exploring unsafe sites as part of a social media trend.

A Northamptonshire Police spokesperson says one boy fell through a glass skylight, suffering a facial laceration and a broken arm. In another incident, a child broke their leg while trying to enter a restricted area.

“Urban exploring may appear exciting to some young people, but the reality is that these locations are often extremely dangerous and can pose a serious risk of injury or even death,” PCSO Scott Potter, from Northampton’s Neighbourhood Policing Team, says in a statement to local news outlet Northampton Chronicle & Echo.

Police have issued similar warnings in Merseyside, a county in northwest England, as well as Oxfordshire in southern England and North Wales.

On the Channel Island of Jersey, the Honorary Police, a volunteer police service, also contacted secondary schools following several incidents reported over the summer, some of which resulted in serious injuries. The force says its intention was not to “criminalize young people who are curious or adventurous” but to prevent them from being injured or engaging in behavior “which could bring them into the criminal justice system”.

How Urbex Photography is Changing

The concerns come as the people taking part in urban exploration photography appear to be changing. In an extensive BBC report, researchers and longtime explorers describe an earlier generation of urbex photographers that was drawn to abandoned places by an interest in their history and architecture. Many younger participants, meanwhile, are approaching urbex through social media and the possibility of building an audience as content creators.

Bradley Garrett, an academic at the University of Sydney who has spent years studying urban exploration and has written several books on the subject, tells the BBC that he has noticed an increase in teenage explorers. He said some are taking unnecessary risks in an effort to “become influencers” and make money. Garrett says most of the urban explorers he met a decade ago were in their 20s or 30s and had “a deep interest in either history or architecture.” But he says younger explorers are increasingly motivated by the prospect of gaining attention online.

“For a lot of young kids it’s a moonshot for them,” Garrett tells the BBC. “They think ‘If I can go out and get into these places and get amazing photos and garner a huge amount of likes I can become an influencer and build my own career'”.

He adds: “It’s all down to social media, it comes down to likes and it comes down to people wanting to get attention essentially”, adding that many child explorers he has come across lack basic safety knowledge.

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