Treating it as an intentional choice is ignoring all the cases of "parent gets investigated or arrested for allowing child outside".

https://people.com/parents/mom-investigated-dcfs-letting-dau...

https://www.parenting.com/blogs/show-and-tell/hayley-parenti...

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arreste...

That's "inside-out" helicopter parenting, where someone else is being the helicopter, not the parent. Kudos to Utah and their "free-range parenting" laws: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/well/family/utah-passes-f...

Local business owner was telling me that police showed up at her business with her 9 year old because the 9 year old was "out on her own". He was walking from the local business to their house, about ... 8 blocks from the business. It's a smallish town (40,000 population, but in this 'old town district', maybe 2-3000?). Police brought the kid back to the business and chastised the business owner, intimating that letting her kid walk home unattended was in violation of some law. She asked for the specific law, which pissed off the officer to no end (because there isn't one here).

What's bizarre is that the cop was probably allowed to do the same as a child.

Yeah! Certainly in my day (which wasn't that long ago!) we ... walked everywhere (or rode a bike) as a kid.

There is safety in numbers; parents will let their kids go out to play when there are other kids around. And depending on where you go in the country, you'll see groups of kids playing or you won't. But it's self feeding, as fewer kids play outside, fewer parents let their kids play outside. My kid has no reason to go outside if there is nobody out there.

True enough, I imagine it would help for kids in the neighborhood to be introduced to each other first.