I see a lot of kids out on balance bikes. My kid was playing with his stomp rocket in the local elementary school playground, and a little girl (about 5) - unattended, on a bike, I assume her mom was a couple hundred yards behind - came up to him and said "I've got a stomp rocket at home too, but my house is being renovated so we're living in a hotel." Playgrounds today are made to be much more about sensory experiences - there's a lot more water play, and places for free play like castle theaters, and plain logs or rocks or other obstacles to climb on. It's more typical for parents to go sit on a bench 50 feet away rather than hovering right over the kid.
Much of this is a very deliberate rejection of post-9/11 parenting standards, and may be generational as well. I think it started to change around 2015-2017; I remember there were articles on HN about a free-range parenting movement in Salt Lake City, or new playgrounds specifically designed to be dangerous in NYC. Also the people having kids now are early/mid-Millenials, while the parents of Zoomers are generally Gen-Xers, who were themselves termed the latchkey/TV-dinner generation. There may also be some survivorship bias where all the kids whose parents never let them do anything themselves failed to launch and have kids of their own, while those who did have kids often had fond memories of independent free play.
I don't see how this can be true. By the time I started high school a decade ago I realized that 90% of human knowledge was freely available to me on the internet. And I explored every crevice of it. The world is at our fingertips in a way it never was before.
It also can't teach how to be independent, interact with friends, or what to do if you get lost (without having your cell phone solve it for you).
My friends and I would ride our bikes around the neighborhood and on trails, go fishing, build lean-tos or whatever in the woods, shoot model rockets, play sports, etc. Sure, some TV and video games too. We even had dial-up later on. But we were out in the world, being active, and thinking for ourselves. Those experiences are much more formative than consuming content created by someone else.
I can't deny that the experiences youth have today are different than those that were had pre-internet, but I will absolutely push back against the notion that they are worse. Building stuff with your hands is undoubtedly a cherished childhood experience for many, but just because kids are interacting over the internet doesn't mean they're not thinking for themselves. In fact, I would say they're thinking for themselves even more since the options are so much vaster. Is building an elaborate world in minecraft or roblox really that different from building lean-tos or model rockets?
Kids used to be way less of a time investment. There were more around, and they very easily latched on to playing with other neighborhood kids all day which acted like free daycare. You could send them out and tell them to be back before dark, feed them food, have family dinners, fix their boo boos and not much else. Now in today's limited age, kids can only play with their literal line of sight neighbors unsupervised and are mostly stuck inside, dependent on a parent to become a playmate because they eventually get bored of the video games. Or they get obsessed to an unhealthy degree.
The independence you talk about is another kind, but still a dependent kind on the parents. I think a cell phone coordinated childhood with the permissiveness of the 70s is the ideal + all the info of the internet, but it's not something you can do in english countries.
There is also a curse-of-knowledge aspect to today's age. The average teen does not seem to deal well with instagram and cell phones, especially girls. It's unique. I think society will eventually create an immune system to universal cellphones and social media, much like we did with TV, but until then we are dealing with it downside more than we should.
Is building software that much different from construction? I think so.
"If I wanted to find something all I needed was to look for it."
True, but most of the content is just someone else's. If you wanted to find something out when I was a kid, you formed a hypothesis and tested it - not just taking the word of someone on the internet. The internet can be useful for information, but not as much for knowledge and possibly even less for wisdom.
"Instant messaging made it easier to interact with friends, not harder."
Maybe sort of. I don't think it's quite the same as in-person. I think we are seeing this on a mass scale with pandemic restrictions too - that virtual presence isn't the same as physical presence. How does one learn to handle emotions in person rather than just shut if the computer when an argument arises?
Really I think this comes down to what you think makes experiences valuable. Obviously virtual and physical construction aren't the same, but do they provide the same benefits? It seems to me that building things is a valuable experience because it teaches kids about hard work, grit, teamwork, perhaps curiosity, and makes all those things fun. Building things virtually seems to me to provide all those same things. Maybe you think getting your hands dirty had some value, in which case yea kids are missing out, but I generally think they're able to get many of the same things with the added benefit of increased use of imagination since they can literally build anything.
Now obviously the internet is what you make of it. Like anything the the internet can be a crutch or a tool. Kids can sit in front of youtube for 10 hours a day and learn nothing from it, but I'm not sure that wasn't also the case in the past. Keeping children on track probably requires more parental oversight than in the past, but I'm not exactly sure that's a bad thing either. Exploring the internet together with your child can easily be a way to bond with them while also creating a lifelong love of building and curiosity.
It seems there's less freedom, and less exploration by kids today. Everything is recorded and documented. It's too expensive or too dangerous for kids to go do stuff. If you make a mistake today, it will follow you forever - little chance to apologize and fix whatever broke (seems more people want to use full force of law to press charges or sue over minor issues even when the person wants to make it right).
I wasn't in the early 80s and didn't have complete free run, but the independence and responsibilities that came with it seem far better than the digital nightmare kids are living in these days. Just my opinion.