At shopping malls, teens' hanging out is wearing thin

But Dr. Blackwell says that malls should weigh their options - including creating teen-friendly experiences that engage them as potential consumers, not shun them as loiterers. After all, teens spent $169 billion in 2004, and 78 percent of teens reported shopping in a mall in the past 30 days, according to the marketing research firm Teen Research Unlimited, in Northbrook, Ill.

Activities that malls offer for teens, however, can backfire if teens deem them "uncool." At the Eastfield Mall, where general manager Arlene Putnam says parents will often drop their children off at 4 p.m. and pick them up at closing time, the mall tried opening up a center strictly for teens, but interest dwindled after the first weekend. Later memos were sent out to parents advising them not to drop their kids off for the entire evening. That didn't work either. "We just have to put our foot down," she says.

The ICSC is compiling data to pinpoint exactly how many of the nation's 1,130 enclosed malls have escort policies. Mall of America was among the first in 1996. Julie Hansen, the director of public relations there, says they were trying to prevent problems. "We had essentially become a baby sitter," she says.

Ms. Hansen says there was resistance at first from parents and kids and even from retailers who feared business would wane. But nearly a decade later, business has perked up as shopping families replaced the unsupervised teens.

Teens say they would be angered if escort policies were put in place in their nearby malls. Bobby Lowe, who sat with two friends in the food court of South Shore Plaza recently, says he and his friends get kicked off the local basketball courts and out of the 7-Eleven nightly. They sometimes hang out at each other's homes, but that gets boring. "There is nowhere else to go," he says. "Everyone is kicking us out of other places. We're not the ones doing anything."

Loitering has long been a teen rite of passage. The 1950s song "Standing on the Corner," in which composer Frank Loesser evoked young men watching the girls go by, still captures the spirit of today's teens who ogle from a distance, Blackwell says. "Where to go on a Friday or Saturday night for teens is generations old," he says. "Years ago they stood on the corner; now they are standing in the mall."

But a mall experience with parents is, well, not quite the mall as teens know it. Joe Donovan, who stood tall among the pack of 10 friends on a recent afternoon, says his group spends most Friday nights at South Shore Plaza - which he simply wouldn't do with Mom or Dad. "I mean, if I had to buy presents at Christmastime, I would," he says - in other words, if he had actual shopping to do.

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