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A study, commissioned by the International Council of Shopping Centers, found that “teenagers in suburban centers are bored and come to the shopping centers mainly as a place to go. Teenagers in suburban centers spent more time fighting, drinking, littering, and walking than did their urban counterparts, but presented fewer overall problems.” The report observed that “adolescents congregated in groups of two to four and predominantly at locations selected by them rather than management.” This probably had something to do with the decision to install game arcades, which allow management to channel these restless adolescents into naturally contained areas away from major traffic points of adult shoppers. The study concluded that mall management should tolerate and even encourage the teenage presence because, in the words of the report, “the vast majority support the same set of values as does shopping center management.” The same set of values means simply that mall kids are already preprogrammed to be consumers and that the mall can put the finishing touches to them as hard-core, lifelong shoppers just like everybody else. That, after all, is what the mall is about. So, it should not be surprising that in spending a lot of time there,adolescents find little that challenges the assumption that the goal of life is to make money and buy products, or that just about everything else in life is to be used to serve those ends.