Shopping centers are considered as great places for many people to spend their spare time and meet others. In contrast, past times, people visited those places only when it was necessary. I strongly disagree that this is a negative trend as it is currently being thought by some people.
Vast majority of people regularly visits shopping malls and similar buildings in modern life. Moreover, going to a shopping mall at weekend is considered as a permanent ritual of most citizens from all over the world. There is a large list of causes for that including economical and technical progress, enormous increase in production and etc. In the past, a deficiency in provision was ubiquitous, and without those technical improvements people did not use to have enough spare time to regularly visit commercial centers though almost every city had markets.
In the era of consumption, spending money for the amenities and business is the pivotal source of economical growth. Thus, the more consumers spend, the more economics will grow. Visiting shopping centers and by so paying for amenities and entertainment, visitors contribute on the financial growth. Additionally, using various services and spending their leisure time with pleasure, people feel more relaxed, decreasing and coping with pressure from work or study. What is more, entrepreneurs have more profit, what could be seen in economical growth as well.
In contrary to recent times, general citizens usually did not have big amounts of money to waste for entertainment in the past. However, only few people had access to amenities and splendour such as entertainments.
To conclude, I would definitely position the fact of spending a leisure time and money by most people in shopping malls as a positive tendency.