Malls. They used to be shopping centers and places for teens to hang out.

Not anymore. Most malls are filled with closed stores and clearance signs.

As many know a lot of malls are closing a bunch of their stores within them. There is always the here and there of a Spencers, Hot Topic, and sometimes a Hollister or H&M. There is not much variety anymore compared to what they used to have.

Malls in the past used to have unique stores and unique features to all of them.

With stores closing since people are shopping online, malls have had to revinent themselves.

Now they may be taking a new look at malls, adding casinos such as in the York Galleria Mall or a Dave and Busters such as in the Capital City Mall.

Although these new businesses do bring more people to the mall, would still rather the old stores and memories of malls instead of having just bigger and better attractions.

According to former Dallastown student, Grayson Knisely, “I miss having a variety…”.

Knisely isn’t opposed to new stores, but says, “I also wish I could go back to how the mall was before back in around 2014.”

The new things in malls might keep them alive but still many still miss the variety that malls used to give to them and the amount of time that they could spend without getting bored.

Some of the reasons malls are closing many stores is simple, since online shopping has blown up more in the past few years many stores in person have closed down or switched over to primarily only online.

Along with Covid it caused many stores to lose out on a lot of money and have to seek other ways to stay in business.

But this may lead to problems as now since people online shop way more they don’t hang out with their friends outside of school and work as much as they used to. This could also possibly be because of the fact that variety in malls have been cut down and now there are only a few stores which never change and are at every other mall.

“It’s good if you want to walk around, but it is kinda boring. I usually never get anything from the mall,” Dallastown graduate Jade Hengst said when talking about the Capital City Mall in Harrisburg.

Going to a mall today might only lead to people either walking around and hanging out or not buying much at all. Even though malls may be closing down, still enjoy them while they are around and try to enjoy some of their new features.

The question is do you like the change or do you wish it was the mall you remember as a child?