That's too bad. When I was 12 (late 1970s, Midwest US) I rode my bike all over the place. No mobile phone either. I'm sure there were as many pedophiles and kidnappers then as now, but I never encountered any. I think the risk of a totally random stranger doing anything is very overblown. And traffic was certainly less aware of bikes. You learned to pay attention to cars.

When I was 12 (late 70s, Australia) I rode my bike all over the place. Rode to and from school, about 25 minutes each way. And through the forest at the edge of town -- we'd disappear for hours there, riding as far as the next town (1 hour downhill :-)

We knew where the dodgy guy hung out near the public toilets in the park, and avoided him (the teacher at school was a different matter).

I think ... people were less alienated from society then. It seems different now.

There's been a few high profile cases of e.g. the van luring kids with puppies or the abduction and rape from the street, but those are edge cases - most cases of pedophiles are from e.g. teachers and family. People you trust and drop your guard around. Not "stranger danger".

When and where was this? Just curious. In the early 90's in the US at age 8-9 I was allowed to ride all around the neighborhood and to school, as long as I was with a friend and not alone. We moved to Europe in 1995 and by then most people had stopped trick-or-treating in the neighborhood due to the TV news scares of razor blades in apples and whatnot, it seemed like the public trust had hit rock bottom.

UK, 1998.

My parents were very unusual, to the point that my friends' parents would lie to them to cover for me, but the practicalities meant I still couldn't do much of what they did. I didn't own a useful bike, didn't have money for the bus etc.

Today, in the US, it's flatly illegal for kids under the age of 12 to be unsupervised in public in many states, including Virginia.

It wasn't like this here when I was growing up.