This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s spring editorial intern Anthony Guigliano. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
Are malls going to be a thing in a couple of years? The answer may be more difficult than you realize.
We have reached the year 2024 and malls are still a thing. For those of you who have been living underneath a rock for the last couple of decades, a mall is a place that contains usually stores, restaurants, and even activities.
They have been around for many years and are throughout the world, but in America, they are heavily featured in movies, and I even work at one.
Yet, that begs the question of this article… are malls going to be a thing in a couple of years? I ask this question because lately when you enter the majority of malls, they are a bit… sparse. Lately, Americans have been documenting in surveys that malls aren’t the “thing” anymore. Usually, back in the early 2000s, they were places for high schoolers to hang out, people to get food during their lunch break, and heck when the holidays rolled around that was the place to get gifts.
Yet, things have changed… and now Americans are wondering if there are going to be malls in the coming years. High schoolers would rather play split-screen Xbox or Fortnite, people would rather Uber Eats, and when the holidays roll around… people just order on Amazon. It’s not out of laziness, but rather more so convenience.
When everything is at the tip of your palm. Why put in the extra legwork? Likewise, Covid-19 played a role in it as well. Now, while businesses suffered, malls especially got the worst brunt of it. Dozens upon dozens of malls across the country suffered, these were mostly malls within towns, not big names like the great American Mall. Malls like that are expected to stay, but your common hometown American mall is either going to go through a renovated makeover to compete with the big names or may fall into obscurity.
Heck, many interesting things are going down in malls now. I know a guy that was heckled for fifteen to twenty minutes and the mall was so poor that they hardly had security or even cameras overlooking the situation. However, on the flip side… malls have slowly been reducing their prices. That is a plus that we will be discussing.
If you go to a mall, Macy’s it isn’t uncommon to find deals upon deals. Don’t get me wrong, Macy’s is still Macy’s but you can get good deals. Whether this is a result of people slowly not going to malls… it is always a pleasant supply to know that you can get good deals. Another interesting thing to note would be how there is still good food to find in malls.
Malls usually have food courts and they are pretty big and expansive. You can usually get cheap and affordable Chinese food, McDonald’s, Popeyes, KFC, and I’ve been to some malls with Chipotle and In & Out.
I would say that malls are going to be a thing that may slowly and slowly become phased out of our society. While there are great big malls akin to the great American mall, there is a lot of proof that Malls are slowly becoming more and more slowly a trend.
As time passes and our ease of accessibility increases, malls may not be the trend anymore to go to or hang out or buy stuff with. We’ve seen this with massive enterprises like Toys R Us which ironically enough the company was picked up by a mall company, Macy’s.
In all Macy’s there is a section now dedicated to toys. While this does keep the Toys R Us history alive, it does highlight that will all the mall closures we can only wonder how long Malls are truly going to last.
What do you think? Will shopping malls make a comeback? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
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