They are hoist on their own petard, because as it turns out, the young families chose the big box stores to save money, and the affluent people are not numerous enough or consumerist enough to support more than one mall in their town. That mall gets the Brookstones and Sephoras and Victoria's Secrets and the Apple Stores. The other malls are full of basically nothing but cell phone vendor kiosks and a food court, and they die.

Malls made an intentional decision to push shopping over social activity, and killed their appeal, because you can shop from anywhere by using your phone, and 99% of what you want comes from a combination of your grocery store, big box store (possibly the same as your grocery store), and online shopping. There is now no reason whatsoever to physically travel to any mall in the US. They have only lame chain restaurants, the Borders/Waldenbooks has been closed for decades, the good music store closed and only the corporate sellout store remains, the Radio Shack is gone, Sears left, JCPenney is kaput, but you have plenty of stores that sell "fashion" to teen girls, including the ubiquitous Express, Justice, Forever 21, and Hot Topic. So the mall is where your mom takes you when the clothes at Wal-Mart, Target, or Kohl's aren't good enough any more.

I think if malls had gone the other direction, perhaps by adding mid-size under-21 live music venues as anchors, they would not be falling apart today.