Loitering is illegal, but the Police Department does not track arrests related to loitering. Mr. Davey said the authority is trying to spread the message of the dangers of surfing on the subway, while the Police Department said in a statement that an increased police presence at stations and on platforms — Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mr. Adams flooded the system with more officers in the fall, who could “deter violations of traffic rules and regulations, including going outside train cars.”
In interviews with five teenagers who have traveled outside the subway, The Times learned that the participants, who are usually teenagers, according to interviews and social media videos, usually get on a train like most passengers. Once the train leaves a station, surfers slide between the cars and climb to the top. The boys say they usually opt for elevated train lines, where they can feel the wind and see the city above ground.
Jon, a 15-year-old boy from Queens who asked to be identified only by his first name out of concern about possible legal repercussions, said police caught him surfing on the back of the No. 5 train earlier this year. 2022. but it came out with a warning.
Thrill-seekers riding on top of subway cars is hardly new; a 1991 article in The Times noted an anecdotal increase at the time. But in an age when social media is so central to the state, teenagers are incentivized to post bolder and more engaging content, experts said, and videos of young subway surfers have gone viral on TikTok . “To get views and likes, and to get people to interact with your posts, you have to do something crazier,” said Kim Gorgens, a psychology professor at the University of Denver. “And to gain notoriety with your friends you have to do something bigger and crazier. We’ve pulled each other together in a really dangerous place.”
After The Times asked TikTok for comment on its policies on surfing videos and content that might encourage young people to do dangerous things, several videos of teenagers surfing in New York disappeared from the platform.
“The safety and well-being of our users is a priority at TikTok. As we make clear in our Community Guidelines, we do not allow content that encourages, promotes or glorifies dangerous challenges that could lead to injury,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.
The surfing videos resemble a real-life version of the Subway Surfers mobile game, where users take on the role of a teenager who has just been caught graffiti-ing and must run across the tracks and jump onto trains to escape of an inspector and his dog. In an increasingly digital world, blurring the lines between the screen and reality can normalize risky behavior, said Dr. Megan Moreno, interim chair of the department of pediatrics and principal investigator of the network research team. of Social and Adolescent Health at the University of Wisconsin.
