I went to a Brooklyn mall on Black Friday and found it empty, confirming the holiday isn't the shopping bonanza it once was

Sarah Jacobs/Business Insider

Target inside the Atlantic Terminal Mall at 6:20 a.m. on Black Friday.

• Black Friday has long been known as the biggest shopping day of the year.
• Now, thanks to mobile and online shopping and year-round discounts, Black Friday is becoming more than just a single-day event - and shoppers aren't going into the stores like they used to.
• We went to Brooklyn's Atlantic Terminal Mall to see how the in-store shopping scene had changed. It was desolate.

Black Friday sales are surging, but you wouldn't know it by visiting Brooklyn's Atlantic Terminal Mall.

When its anchor store, Target, opened at 6 a.m. on Black Friday, I went to see for myself how the crowds compared to what I remembered from my childhood days in the 1990s.

I found a meager line outside, waiting for the mall to open, and even fewer people outside of Target and Best Buy. See what shoppers were buying - and how desolate it looked - below.