The “Kia Boys” Trend and Auto Theft: An Empirical Study

• In Event: Poster Session 2

Abstract

Since 2021, cities across the United States have experienced alarming increases in the rates of auto theft. Viral videos of the Kia Challenge shared on TikTok, a social media platform, were said to fuel this epidemic as young teenagers, known as Kia Boys, exposed ways to steal Kia and Hyundai vehicles for high-speed joyrides. Using the weekly counts of vehicle thefts from 2018 to 2023 in a large city in the Midwest, the current study employs interrupted time-series designs to analyze the effects of the Kia Boys trend on the rise of auto theft. Our findings reveal a strong positive relationship between the two. We also examine the characteristics of the juveniles responsible for daring car heists during this period. Geo-coded individual-level data allows us to retrieve an array of census-block-level information to construct an index of concentrated disadvantages as a proxy indicator for socioeconomic status (SES). Using multivariate analyses, we assess the predictive power of juveniles’ demographics, SES, and co-offending in targeting certain vehicles pre and during the Kia Boys trend. The results suggest that while white and black Kia Boys hailed from sharply different SES backgrounds, involvement in co-offending significantly explained the shared pattern of stealing such vehicles.

Authors

• Jeff Peterson, University of Nebraska Omaha

• Carisma Jano, University of Nebraska Omaha