When I was growing up in the 90s, I'd routinely bike many miles away from home and disappear for hours before I came home. Nowadays letting your kids do that is liable to get CPS called on you.
How the heck did we end up here?!
In my view, America as a society became paranoid after 9/11. What you're seeing is a symptom of this. It isn't like this in other countries: kids walk around by themselves all the time.
I've been in one of the most rural county of West Virginia, i saw kids outside each time i left the "house".
Oh, it was on this track well before 9/11. Satanic Panic and Stranger Danger as concepts were there long before terrorist attacks on American soil, for a lot longer duration, and were largely explicitly about the dangers to children.
I don't know how accurate it is, but an FBI investigator by the name of Ken Lanning links Satanic Panic to the development of X-Rays and the discovery by doctors of evidence of rampant child abuse.[1] The idea being that people just couldn't accept that kids were being abused at such high rates at home, therefore there must be this secretive "other" harming the children.
People have been primed by the media to be this paranoid for a long time, because it gets attention.
Kid: <Happily playing with clay>
Teacher: Oh, by the way, he fell out of a small tree today, he was climbing and fell, so he may have a small bruise, just so you are aware
Me: Oh ok. What tree?
Teacher: Oh we took them to <forest 5 miles from daycare> and grilled hot dogs today!
Kid: I found a snail!
But in my kid's preschool (for 5-6 year olds), when they were presenting a plan for this year and how they'll be crossing the street to another of their buildings for a few hours, one of the parents was worried they'll do that even if it rains or snows!
When asked how will they bring their kid to preschool not dressed for the elements, it was (not-surprisingly) "by car". I guess going outside is limited to sunny weather for their kids!
But go and have a walk. What do you see "happening" ? nothing.
There are a lot of excellent videos about this sad problem, like this: https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw
But at the end of the day, when it’s not actually possible to be independent every day, you just loose this culture. And countries that made different infrastructure and development decisions 6 decades ago are in a much better place today — it doesn’t have to be this way.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1310218/time-spent-using...
Generally the younger you are the more likely you are to be a heavy user of your phone. There is no data for it but I would expect that high school and jr high kids are probably even higher users than 18 - 34.
As a footnote: Yes, I know this seems fairly reductive and there's a lot of nuance left on the table. A single counter example won't change my mind because I'm talking about tendencies instead of black or white expression.
We don't live in the states.
It's hard to fathom that this could be considered illegal.
What fun is it being a kid if you can't explore? That was the only really good part, otherwise childhood and adolescence is mostly suffering.
Wasted youth.
Richard Ramirez became popular a few years after the law was enforced, and at that point it solidified for everyone "this was the right decision".
Many parents in the 90's let their kids walk home alone, and explore their neighbourhoods on their own.. And even today it's popular in rural areas. But the nature of where people live now is more related to cost of living and jobs, which everyone changes every few years - so nobody knows their neighbours or their community.
Now it's normal to shame parents who do this. And schools automatically notify the authorities if they're told about it.
Would kids get taken away from parents for this? Unlikely, legislation only pushes a $2,000 fine.
Yes, kids have been abducted in New Zealand. Yes, kids have been assaulted in New Zealand. It is a possibility.
Everything is a possibility, it's all about the statistical probability of a bad outcome actually happening.
Someone could break into my house and murder me at any moment. I still don't wander around with a bat or a club because such events are sufficiently rare here in West Menlo Park.
When I was a kid, it seemed like adults were idiots by and large.
Now as I'm getting a bit more ahem, experienced, my perception is regressing back towards this hypothesis.
Why are the karens winning? :/
Not true.
I went to visit the village. I was walking in the backroads and a dude with 2 machetes and one eye walked up to me in the road while he was roasting a fucking dog over a fire.
I told him nice machetes. He didn't seem to understand, so I just pointed at his machetes and smiled. Fortunately he seemed disarmed once I confidently showed I found the whole thing amusing, and just gestured towards available dog to eat.
The lesson of their protectiveness was learned.
They'd be lucky to even have two live parents and in the picture.
Please continue and tell me more about the topic.
As usual, America is the weird one, perhaps with some other Anglophone nations following suit.
Recently when going by tram with kids somewhere I saw ~8-9yo girl travelling by herself seeing her confused started to cry, so I approached her, she said she is going wrong direction, told her to get off with us and then just directed her to right tram in different direction and went with my kids own way. Told her it's not big deal, she just lost few minutes and it can happen anyone to confuse tram numbers. Before COVID I used to approach tourists going in direction to my home since many of them went wrong direction, but surprisingly often I am met with German tourists who like riding trams whole line back and forth, I've had this hobby with Beijing subway lines when I lived there.
Actually my father (from small 40K town) came to visit just yesterday and he also took tram in wrong direction, realized it after 3 stops, but had problem to get back since there was no stop in opposite direction nearby, which happens with some stops, usually you just need to cross the road/tracks.
Where do you live?
Whenever I read these stories it feels like I live on a different planet from everyone else.
Note: I looked up these stats to make sure I got them right. They are mostly at the voting precinct, and census BG level, but I'm abstaining from posting them for obvious reasons.
I live in the midwest, in a smaller town. You still see kids playing in the neighborhood and parks and running around. Kids walk and bike to school. Nobody would call the cops over a kid walking by himself unless he looked to be lost or in distress.
Cops and CPS can't be bothered (note I never personally called them, although I have had to address the children directly to ask them to stop stealing from my house). I still prefer that to a "safe" place where my kids have to risk getting ripped away from their parents for walking to a park.
The key to not dealing with police is moving to a high crime area with a weak police presence. These kind of CPS paranoia stuff is generally not enforced in places that are actually less safe for children. If the area is safe, that's when CPS/police will have the time to focus on you to call it unsafe. That is, kids aren't really safe from CPS of accusing them of being unsafe unless it is actually unsafe, in which case authorities never responded in the first place because CPS and the police are busy visiting an abandoned crack-baby.
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/01/598630200/utah-passes-free-ra...
We can broaden that a bit to: “There’s an ever growing group of people who think they can and should be the arbiter of other people’s behavior.”
Everyone needs to learn to mind their own fucking business.
Complete anecdata, but the parents in my close friend group are split between "parents with a more free-range kid mindset" and "typical upper-middle-class parental paranoia."
The free-range kids are mostly happy-go-lucky, emotionally stable, and thriving. Almost every single kid over the age of 10 with paranoid parents is diagnosed with a mental health condition of some sort. I mean I literally can only think of one who is not in therapy or taking medication. I think the isolation and lack of unsupervised group activities that you describe is a big part of it.
One of my more paranoid friends made a judgmental comment recently regarding my other friend's daughter not being in therapy. I was extremely confused and asked if the kiddo was having emotional issues. Her response was, "Well not yet, but 12 is a very stressful age, and I think that when you have the money to do so, it's just good parenting to ensure your kid is talking to a therapist on a regular basis."
The level of paranoia needed to believe that every single perfectly stable 12-year-old needs weekly visits with a mental health professional to ensure their health and safety, and that not supplying this is neglectful, is just... bizarre.
I cannot help but believe this sort of behavior is severely damaging the psyche of these kids. And I also don't see how it can't be hurting the parents as well. Imagine how incredibly stressful it must be to be a parent who believes every stranger, every walk around the block, and every pre-teen mood swing is a serious danger to their child.
But as for outside masks, I agree, it's just straight up unscientific. Especially when people are wearing flimsy cloth masks that do little to ward off COVID germs in the first place! Although I know some people keep them on outside if they're walking between buildings, just because it's easier than taking it on/off constantly.
So anyway, masks kind of fall into that category of "I ain't gonna judge if I don't know your exact situation."
But I agree, it would be nice to be able to tell my friends who are perfectly healthy with no at-risk loved ones, hey, you really don't need to keep wearing a mask outside for the rest of your life. Both because it's silly, and because it seems genuinely damaging to their mental health... I have a couple friends who still get anxious/upset when someone gets within 6 feet of them without a mask on, and it's just a needlessly stressful way to live that is taking a very, very serious toll on their mental health.
It was like this when I was in high school as well: There is no place where young people are allowed to gather and explore their personalities.
I wish I knew. My children have had the cops called on them for playing in our front yard. I wish they could spend their afternoons climbing trees and playing in the grass like I did growing up, but there's a group of people who see children playing outside of direct parent supervision as a categorically dangerous activity.
I'm always struck when I take my kids to school and see the high schoolers gathered around waiting for their bus to pick them up. You wouldn't even know they exist otherwise - there's no other signs of their existence, no groups of them playing at the park, no sounds of games in the streets, no hoots or hollers from down the block - just nothing, silence. Each house is an island and each teen a castaway from 4pm when they get home to 7am when they leave for school, severed from the neighborhood and each other while the same folks say, "How come kids don't play outside anymore?"