I don't think this has been true, at least in the US, since the 1990s.
They are hoist on their own petard, because as it turns out, the young families chose the big box stores to save money, and the affluent people are not numerous enough or consumerist enough to support more than one mall in their town. That mall gets the Brookstones and Sephoras and Victoria's Secrets and the Apple Stores. The other malls are full of basically nothing but cell phone vendor kiosks and a food court, and they die.
Malls made an intentional decision to push shopping over social activity, and killed their appeal, because you can shop from anywhere by using your phone, and 99% of what you want comes from a combination of your grocery store, big box store (possibly the same as your grocery store), and online shopping. There is now no reason whatsoever to physically travel to any mall in the US. They have only lame chain restaurants, the Borders/Waldenbooks has been closed for decades, the good music store closed and only the corporate sellout store remains, the Radio Shack is gone, Sears left, JCPenney is kaput, but you have plenty of stores that sell "fashion" to teen girls, including the ubiquitous Express, Justice, Forever 21, and Hot Topic. So the mall is where your mom takes you when the clothes at Wal-Mart, Target, or Kohl's aren't good enough any more.
I think if malls had gone the other direction, perhaps by adding mid-size under-21 live music venues as anchors, they would not be falling apart today.
They also removed much of what would attract teens and that age group. And many of the "older person stores" are ridiculously priced. Amazon, Walmart online, Aliexpress, and others are cheaper.
Malls are full of expensive stuff, not very good stuff, and caters to nobody in particular.
I know for us, it's because "Payless Shoes" that has cheap size 15's is the only reason why. So we beeline in, and out.
You'd have to be older than gen-x to remember malls favorably as a teen. The place to socialize is/was high school sports in (ahem, under) the stands, and darkly lit movie theaters. Since the 80s, which is a long time ago, trying to hang out at the mall will get you kicked out by rentacops or arrested.
Another problem is the dead mall death spiral has no backwards movement, can only ratchet toward death. The closest mall to me went 95% womens clothing stores a long time ago and is now on the march toward having its sixth athletic shoe store. Its a one way path to foreclosure, like a diode action only moving one way. I don't buy womens clothes, so other than taking my wife or daughter there, its already dead to me...
Its interesting that when I was a kid the mall provided the novelty of everything under one roof. Then big box stores happened and there is no appeal to lots of little box stores under one roof when I can just go to Target or Walmart. Walmart today is the early 80s mall of my youth.
I remember Spaceport and Aladin's castle. .25$ arcades, and $1 gave 5 tokens. You could play for hours just on $5. And they allowed kids, competitions, and all sorts of things. I'd go hang out while my parents were shopping, and just chill.
There also used to be, in quite a lot of the malls, a jungle gym or playground area. They'd be full of kids, and you could just chill and hang out, except for free. But there were usually age limits so you didn't hurt little ones. And around this was always a common area. Lots of tables, food places, coffee shop or 2.
Clubs and nonprofits would meet here - it was a huge commons area. I remember fondly playing chess on chess club nights. Played some pretty awesome pros there.
And the companies there.. You had Sears, Estee Lauder, Nordstrom, and all those big name box stores. And then you'd have all sorts of smaller stores scattered, with rarely ever any room left over (1-2 empty plots due to eventual turnover). But there was something for everyone. Maybe it was a candy store, or a toy store, or specialty thing.
That's all changed.
Arcades are gone. Yeah, there's one 35 miles away from me, in the next city over. The jungle gyms and playgrounds were deemed dangerous and unsupervised, so they were decommissioned. You know, for "safety". And those tables? Yeah, those only encourage bums and lazy people to congregate, so they're right out.
And those clubs? Yeah, they need to pay rent if they want to have a group, so they too were summarily kicked out (Well.. it is private property :/ ). And now with less people, those food vendors started closing. That coffee shop had not enough customers and moved/closed. The rest of the food vendors (whom you've never heard of), now started skimping hard and jacking the prices.
And that's not to add in the compounding issues with online stores. A single online store can house millions of products. No real retailer can do that. So, you see the big box stores being squeezed by both the malls running people out, higher prices than online, and better selection than online. So, they end up closing and going bankrupt. It's not any one fault here, but a compound effect that set these things in motion.
For me, its that single shoe place. I make a point to park at the closest place to get in, try on shoes, and get out. There's nothing else here for me. And clothing is really the last bastion of something you really should be in person for - cause sending back stuff sucks.
