The Mall

When you think of malls, your first thought would probably be shopping, right? Well, not so much anymore. Malls are very convenient places to go if there are things you need from several different stores. Or if you don’t know what you need, it gives you plenty of options. What most people don’t know is that the mall isn’t just there for shopping. It can also be a social hang out for all different ages. The nice thing is all the variety of items and food all found at one location especially if you have people of different ages. The mall has many different functions utilized by many different groups of people. We went to the mall specifically to watch people and, we found that most of the people at the mall didn’t have a specific intention, in fact, very few actually did.

There were many different groups of people at the mall. They ranged in all ages from infants to senior citizens. Most people would think of the mall as a common place for girls to go shopping, but we noticed several groups of boys mostly between the ages of 16 and 25. Most of the boy groups we saw didn’t seem to have a specific reason for being at the mall. Some of the boys were shopping, and others were just there. I guess you could say that the boys were shopping, just not all of them were shopping for merchandise.

As far as kids go, there were a large amount of Jr. High age children and maybe even a little younger, walking around without parents. They were going in stores and looking around, but very rarely coming out with purchases. There was a huge gap between high school and young singles. There is a good reason for this, because most college students have very crazy lives during the week and Saturday is a day for relaxing and sleeping in. Most of the groups were mixed boys and girls and seemed to be there for the social aspect. Some actually shopped, and others had no plans to even enter a store. If they did it was because they were following the crowd.

Young families made up a large portion of the people we observed. By young family we mean young parents with a baby in a stroller. It seemed to be a bonding time for them. Some acted as if they were displaying their bundle of joy showing how proud they were to be parents. Shopping seemed to be the last thought on their mind. Mothers with school-aged children were another group who seemed to be doing the most shopping. They were carrying the most shopping bags. Children of this age grow very fast, and are constantly needing new school clothes, so frequent trips to the mall are made. You could certainly tell by the looks on their faces that they knew what they were there for and intended on accomplishing the task.

Surprisingly, there were a vast amount of senior citizens. Some were shopping, but it seemed that most of them were using the mall to walk for exercise. The ones who were shopping knew what stores the wanted to