This is anecdotal to me, but I remember going to the mall a whole lot as a kid cuz my mom liked shopping at the stores there. Nowadays, she still shops at the same stores, but usually through their own websites. For me, when I learned how to drive and could go to the mall myself, it was probably only to go to a place like Gamestop, since the one in the mall was the closest to me. Again, online shopping, and especially being able to download games through like, Xbox Live, the eShop (and Steam, but I wasn’t really into PC gaming until much more recently) was much more convenient than having to drive 20-30 minutes to the mall.

EDIT: Another thing I remembered is that a Target opened up closer to where I lived, so it just became more convenient to shop there for stuff like cheap clothes vs brand name places like H&M. They also sold stuff you couldn’t buy at the mall like groceries, so it was more enticing, i guess.

Recently I went back to the mall I grew up around and it was a lot more empty. One of the really big stores that was there when I was a kid was Sears and they’re gone now, and that mall had a TON of space dedicated to Sears. No one has come to lease that space. The mall has a sprawling parking lot that’s mostly empty now.

I remember as a kid there were always like, crazy extravagant displays at the mall around the Holiday Season, and things like raffles where you could win a new car or something, but I don’t think any of that has happened there in recent years to nearly the same scale.

I wouldn’t say this mall is completely dead yet (I visited a different mall that had like, maybe 5 stores open and a lot of converted office space in it on a Saturday afternoon and that was eerie and dead while still being open to the public), but I think its on its way out.