All the smaller malls died/are dying. The upscale like, destination malls in larger cities are surviving. Maybe one or two per larger city.

It's great if you love insanely overpriced clothes!

Ours is quite lively. Not hating social interaction, but the crowding is a bit much. The other mall died, only got one now.

Being a teen in the 80s, Woodland Hills Mall was the bomb! Big enough to spend the afternoon, hang out, meet girls, hit the arcade, dodge the skins and rednecks who wanted to beat our punker asses. Good times!

Of our surviving malls, they all had to go through a big redesign, to try to steer into the 'hang out' sentiment. Lot's of more higher end dining, a park, apartments/hotels/office space, a few small performance venues for bands.

A mall that has all of that now was, before the renovation, was department stores and specialty shops connected as spartan and efficiently as possible, with a fast food court for convenience but nothing you'd really want to sit longer than you absolutely had to. To the extent it worked as a teen hangout it was because they could grab some cheap food, be inside under a generic roof outside any stores, they could giggle at the stuff in Spencer's Gifts.

We had one of our local malls torn down and replaced with one of those giant, multi-strip-mall complexes with parking lots that are nearly impossible to navigate through. It dawned on me that it's still basically a mall, just one that you can drive through to each store so you don't have to walk very much.

I have at least three near me. I intend to go next month, to get a new iPhone. So yeah, every 2-5 years; I’m not their number one customer