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This Week in Teens

This Week in Teens: Why Are American Teenagers Ditching Shopping Malls?

Our malls are in trouble, which means a pivotal component of the adolescent experience (and the American dream) is at risk.

This place is a fucking ghost town. Photo via Flickr user Nicholas Eckhart

Have you been to the mall lately? It's a heavy scene: Anchor stores sit empty and once-prominent chain stores are gone. Meanwhile, dental clinics and for-profit colleges have opened in their places. Malls are dying; the one-two punch of the recession and the rise of e-commerce have turned America's shopping centers into half-empty vestiges of their former selves.

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Even stranger though, is the lack of teens. From Clueless to Bill and Ted's, from Mean Girls to those SNL skits where David Spade and Chris Farley dress as girls and work at the GAP, the mall has always been inextricably linked to American teenagers. Rich kids went to Abercrombie; their less-fortunate peers worked at Hot Dog on a Stick. Even misfits hung out together at the mall. My heart pangs at the realization that future generations will never know about mall punks, the erroneously-named mix of demi-goths, gutter punks, Doom aficionados, and kids who have just changed a lot since fifth grade.

Do you remember that golden hour when stores were closed but the physical entrance to the mall was still open? Walking past the grated-up shop windows, there was a looming threat, but also a feeling of endless possibility: What if we waited in the bathroom and then stayed in the mall all night? Anything could happen. Sadly, today's teens don't even have that option. In Texas, it recently emerged that a 14-year-old spent four days hidden not in a shopping mall, but in the aisle of a Walmart. The boy hid out near the baby section, and he even wore a diaper so that he wouldn't draw attention by using the store's bathroom. He was only discovered because employees saw his trash pile. This is a clear example of our teens' lowered expectations. Put plainly, the American dream of eternal paradise at the shopping mall has been replaced by Walmart. After all, who needs stores like Sam Goody and Victoria's Secret when you can take care of all your shopping in one place? Sure, the CDs don't have swear words and the underwear is less sexy, but hey, things are now cheaper and way more convenient.

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-A new report from the Center for Disease Control highlights that teen pregnancy rates are continuing to drop. Though it's pretty funny that teen pregnancy falls under the jurisdiction of the people in charge of disease control, this study's news isn't surprising. It's been happening for a few years and, as we've been saying for a while now, no one is really sure why it's happening. As our own Grace Wyler points out, there are lots of theories: It could be better birth control, better sex education, or maybe the recession has made potential teen mothers decide that the time isn't right.

There's also the idea that reduced exposure to lead might have something to do with it. This seems a little bit insane-could a random chemical element, and not our imperfect human brains, be what's directing our lives? But lead has previously been linked to all sorts of criminal behavior, so it's maybe not quite so far-fetched. Most likely, it's a combination of all these factors, but my favorite theory is that MTV's shows 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom made viewers realize that being a teen parent isn't fun at all (unless you're Farah Abraham). According to Vox, MTV's "shows are a realistic window into having a baby during high school. Boyfriends leave, weekends are ruined, and college plans get deterred." It's kind of pathetic that it took a couple of MTV reality programs for people to realize this, but progress is progress, I guess.

-Semi-adulthood isn't what it used to be. Teens have never had total freedom, but at least parents didn't expect them to be literally on call at all times. Cell phones have changed that. The problem with traditional cell phones, of course, is that teens can always just not answer them. Every good mom knows that "I didn't hear it ringing in my purse" really means "I didn't hear it ringing because I was on drugs," though, which is why one Houston mom invented the app Ignore No More. With Ignore No More, parents who fear their kids are deliberately not answering their calls can lock their kids' phones. Kids are then forced to call them back before resuming games like Angry Birds and sexting. This might seem like yet another example of helicopter parenting and the infantilization of young adults, and, well, that's exactly what it is.

-According to a new poll of 500 teenagers, "Eight out of 10 18-year-olds felt it was too easy to accidentally view explicit images while surfing the internet." While writing this column I spend a significant amount of time researching teens online, so I can verify that this is all too true. 72 percent of those surveyed also said "pornography led to unrealistic views about sex" and 66 percent felt that "it would be easier growing up if pornography was less easy to access for young people." While porn certainly creates unrealistic expectations (real-life sex is not gymnastics, and porn stars almost never say things like "that usually doesn't happen" afterwards), the idea that life would be easier without porn seems misguided. Does porn lead teenage boys to pressure teen girls into doing things they're not ready for? Definitely. But those pressures have always been there, and at least now we're talking about them. The normalization of porn has gone hand-in-hand with an increased acceptance of sex as a healthy, normal, and potentially fun thing. Porn has put sex out in the open, and it's hard to think that covering it up will make things better. More realistically, puberty and sexual awareness are always going to be difficult things for teens to deal with-with or without porn.

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