The mall is a common experience for the majority of American youth; they have
probably been going there all their lives. Some ran within their first large open space,
saw their first fountain, bought their first toys, and read their first book in a mall. They
may have smoked their first cigarette or first joint or turned them down. Teenagers in
America now spend more time in the mall than anywhere else but home and school.
Mostly it is their choice, but some of that mall time is put in as the result of twopaycheck
and single-parent households, and the lack of other viable alternatives.
The presence of so many teenagers for so much time was not something mall
developers planned on. In fact, it came as a big surprise. But kids became a fact of
mall life very early, and the International Council of Shopping Centers found it
necessary to commission a study, which they published along with a guide to mall
managers on how to handle the teenage incursion.
The study found that mall kids are already preprogrammed to be consumers and
that the mall can put the finishing touches to them as hard-core, lifelong shoppers just
like everybody else. The study disclosed that adolescents find little that challenges the
assumption that the goal of life is to make money and buy products, or that just about
everything else in life is to be used to serve those ends.