I'm not sure what it's like these days, but when I was in my early teens, before I could drive, my mother would drive me and maybe a friend to the mall, and we

I'm not sure what it's like these days, but when I was in my early teens, before I could drive, my mother would drive me and maybe a friend to the mall, and we could walk around and hang out without our parents. They'd go get something they needed, and we'd go to the record store, or the food court, and just talk and stuff. It was a place where you could meet kids who went to other schools than you. It was basically our first taste of freedom from parents and freedom of choice. If we had some pocket money we could pick up an album we liked, or buy a shirt or poster we thought was cool, or whatever. As mentioned in the article, as we got older, it became a place of conformity, but from about age 10-15, it was a really nice reprieve from family life, and was a relatively safe place to have that reprieve.