Currently studying into this as part of criminology. What are seeing is a 'blip' in the figures for violent crime. However, crossing this study over with sociology, there appears to be a correlation with an appearance of violent drug related gang sub-cultures. This would indicate that imported life styles from the USA are at work on impressionable young minds. Guns are hard to come by in the UK and ammunition even harder. The knife is now the chosen weapon, as it has been since around three ice ages ago!
The impact that social media has is hard to measure, but the language used in the newsfeeds concentrates on certain words such as 'bludgeoned, slaughtered, butchered and massacred'. This sells. Within the likes of twitter, blogs and facebook, we see biased views of one side. Entertainment gives over the story of 'Gallant drug dealers' fighting for the respect they are due and the territories they own. These include the 'oppression' by authorities and the police.
So what is the solution? As yet, there isn't one. Prison only reinforces their behaviour. HMP Wandsworth is a joke of failure reinforcing failure. The Scandinavian model isn't working in British prisons, because... we're not Scandinavian! The Tories pretend to be tough on crime, and yet they slash the ability of the state to fight it. Perhaps to avoid the larger unseen 'white collar' sector financially speaking.
Education, indoctrination and social hope are the only rays of hope. Education is being cut back, Brexit removes stability and indoctrination is only really working for the violent gang sub-cultures.
We could try to bring back a National Service, so at least we'd have well disciplined thugs! That of course is very expensive, and a tory government shirks social responsibility to the masses, claiming all is in the hands of individuals.
Well, that may be the start of my dissertation on the way!