I chose to live in a more urban area of Seattle (Ballard) because I want my now 1st grader to be able to do things when he is a bit older. Still not as nice as Tokyo, but it could be a lot worse if we lived further north or on the east side.
It's still that way, only with more bike lanes and fewer kids outside.
I grew up in a typical suburban-style neighborhood (a few meandering roads with a lot of cul-de-sacs branching off and some connecting streets, quarter-acre lots, three-to-five bedroom ranches, two-stories, or bi-levels mostly spec-built). There was a park of about one square block, and a gas station at one of the neighborhood entrances. We rode bikes around, got soda or candy at the gas station, played in friends yards or at the park or at driveway basketball goals, nothing super exciting but kids find ways to entertain themselves. They don't need a bunch of "destinations" like adults do. This was all pre-computer, and there was nothing interesting to a kid on TV during the day.
Kids just need unstructured time with other kids, they will make up something to do. It's not really an intrisic problem with suburbia, it's a problem with hovering, overprotective adults.
I'm talking mostly about kids 8-14 or so. Older teens will get more bored and mischevious. Fortunately by that age there's more stuff they can be involved in at school or they can get a job.
In my experience, at least, this is a large contributor to the drug epidemic. You could get a job, or you could get high. For a lot of people, it's an easy choice.
I was under the impression it was more of a 20+ thing.
I guess I romanticized the big city as a kid, leading me to prefer urban over suburban living for my own kid. Maybe this will backlash and he will choose suburbia for his own kid(s).
Still, I’ve always romanticized the big city. Never lived it, though, so maybe it’s a grass-is-greener thing, but maybe I’ll be able to give it a whirl someday.
As a curiosity, I checked out the neighborhood I used to live in on google maps to see if they had put any parks or sidewalks since. Nope, exactly the same.
The important thing is just having some sort of space, as the article puts it.
>> As described by Ray Oldenburg, “third places” are locations where locals can meet, interact, and relax in a place that isn’t their home or place of work. In these locations, kids get the chance to socialize and develop intellectually. American suburbs don’t have these places.
There's rightfully no stipulation whether that's a corner store, mall, park, empty lot, or wild area.
The important thing is that it's accessible to kids and parents aren't around.
Kids need parks, sports fields, cinemas, hobby stores, places to get food, etc, and they need them within walking distance. Being virtually dependent on cars to get anywhere is very crippling for kids.
If there were free taxi services (or other transit), kids would be fine.
And honestly, most of the evil comes from overly-empowering parents. "I don't think you should go there / do that / hang out with those friends" is toxic.
Healthier, as kids mature, for them to be able to do things that parents disapprove of... but can't stop. While still allowing prevention of serious choices.
Making kids dependent on parents' cars increases parents' power from "I can speak out about things I disagree with" to "My agreement is required for anything to happen."
And that's really not healthy, for the kid or the parent.
I think it would be great if kids could take themselves to gymnastics practice on public transit. But giving them the choice between that and smoking pot with friends? I think the choice hurts rather than helps.
Last I looked it up, there were pretty serious mental health issues associated with the tiger parenting technique.
Kids aren't glued to their phones because there isn't a street of coffee shops and delis to buy £5 drinks and £10 sandwiches or a nightclub scene, and they wouldn't tend to go to the art gallery or library to play if moved somewhere more urban, they'd hang around on street corners, head to small parks that aren't dissimilar to the suburban ones or go explore the relative abundance of derelict buildings, industrial sites and railway sidings.
Particularly amusing to see British style terraced housing painted as a solution, as if the street corners the kids who grow up there hang out on (if they go outside at all) are some kind of idyll suburbia is depriving them of with its gardens and lack of corner stores that'll sell them vapes.
There’s a world out there far and beyond whatever bubble you’re in. My daughter (6) can go out back on the playground or practice archery or whatever. My next-door neighbor (next-door in the original, pre-app sense) has a dirt bike track for his handful of kids (5+ and up)
I’ve got all kinds of neighbors with kids doing all the old things we did pre-Black Mirror in the pocket.
Don’t get me wrong, I FIGHT like a… expletive, with my kids about screen time to a degree that my folks and older siblings laugh about given I’m a self-taught teenage hacker.
But kids and communities with “go do shit” old-er school norms exist outside of the big cities.
What you described is the exception, most people live in either sterile suburbs and small towns, or densely packed (and dangerous) cities. Space for a dirt track in your backyard is a pipe dream. Around the world, the closest to your description would be rural areas in less developed countries, which is also a small % of the population.
The bubble, in this context, is the average/representative lifestyle and parenting depicted in lifestyle journalism/blogging space. The proverbial TED abstraction.
Obviously physical circumstances are vary, but that didn't start in the smartphone era.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't claim either of the sides in this conversation are the norm; I know plenty of people who will let their kids run around, and plenty of people who wouldn't.
Anyway.. if you want to have a conversation about childhood, parenting, suburbs.. quantifications and statistics (assuming that is what you're looking for) are allowed.. but the conversation will be fundamentally subjective.
There's no other way, that isn't meaningless, to have this conversation.
If you want to narrow down, to a specific point that can actually be settled in such a way.. that's great. A great point in the conversation. Not the conversation itself.
There is no way to quantify or settle this debate.. with published social studies. The complex relationship between parental culture, modern childhood, screens, neighborhoods... There is no reason to think this will be modeled out in a comprehensive,"objective" way.
You can make a data centered argument, that is fine. It is not possible to do this honestly, well being both broad and tight.
Iregardless, OP's point stands. "It's the screens."
Trying to isolate kid culture, school culture, parents, parenting.. it can't be done. It's a complex. It is now a complex operating in a highly computerized world. The way to think of it is as one major aggravating factor.. that changing material culture.. and how it is affecting the complex that is parenting-childhood-culture. Every element of that complex is co-evolving tightly interrelated.
If you want to think of this objectively (in a pragmatist sense), which outside (the complex) change is the primary driver. Suburban design, or screens.. a computerization of culture.
Arguably everyone has always been in the bubble of our own life. OP had an intention, using the term. He's not talking about stereotypes or extremes. He's talking about the normal life of of most parents reading hn. Even if not, he just gave an example from his life.. demonstrating why he thinks that screens>suburban planning as factors.
Then in commeth the recycled meme version of this conversation. Memes of 7-year-olds taking their dirt bikes to the hardware store. Reddit class politics. Second hand TED arguments about parents not letting kids be free.
I take all the points, but a whole variety of social conditions play.. now and in the past. Also coevolving parenting culture. Also suburban planning, the actual topic of the article.
There's nothing unreasonable about OP's point. That the main factor is screens. It's arguable, and it would be interesting & reasonable to argue a contrary point too. Good faith would be to assume that he/she is someone up to date with the meme version.. as most of us are.
Instead, he gets a snarky, internet-bubble suggestion that parental reticence is at the heart. It is, quite honestly, typically internet.
A 15-year-old analysis, that "went TED" 10 years ago. Went viral 5 years ago.. and jammed into this thread.
This is in fact, a good demonstration of how digital culture prevails. It is aloof from normal life. Allowing children freedom is one thing. Getting them to exercise it, in practice, is the primary challenge most parents see and face. They don't want to go explore. Run wild with their friends. They want screen time. You have to force the little bastard outside
Anyway.. from here the word bubble is the conversation.. and since someone mentioned the word suburb.. Reddit class politics.
We really need to do better on this. These conversations are making us dumber, not smarter.
> Perhaps, but that is a seperate debate.
Barely, like how a noose and a neck aren't the same thing. But they both play a critical part in the life-altering catastrophe.
Last year both my kids and a bunch from around the neighborhood decided to walk back together. They had a roaring good time. School would release at 3. It would be 4 by the time they got back home after stops at the park, jumping across the small creek, etc etc. The big kids went off to middle school so they aren’t walking back anymore. But everyone of them still misses the walk back.
The place where I’m at is surprisingly walkable at least in the 1.5 mile radius enough to get the kids to their local cafe or run errands. The 10 and above kids regularly take off on their own. The phones have location turned on anyway.
It was really one of the most unexpectedly heartening things I've seen in a while.
What are the odds they would all sit around together, outside, on their phones?
> My guess is probably not. And that’s not the kids’ doing— that’s OUR doing.
It's parent's doing both because of their regulations. It's also parent's doing because parents choose to live in suburbia / pay a premium to do so. If parents paid premiums to live in dense urban neighborhoods, more would be built / development patterns would change.
It's weird. As I said... we live in an inner city (we're 1.5 miles from downtown core of our west coast city). You'd think our streets were busy, but ... they're less busy than the suburban street I grew up in. Here's the difference.. in a city. Few people drive. There are certainly main thoroughfares that are very crowded (my kids are not allowed to cross the large streets themselves). But within our neighborhood, bounded by large streets, the streets are really tiny and there's few drivers. My house is actually quieter than the suburban street I grew up on. It's silent at night. Cars are the noise, not people. People are quiet.
So that is to say... Yes it's parents fault. But parents are responding to their built environment, not any internal moral failing. The main issue is that parents are unable to understand the consequences of suburban living.
The parents are practically committing a crime if they let their kids do this.
> more kids . . . New York City
Or any big city. Even in wealthy neighborhood.
In the suburbs you almost never see kids outside without an adult present.
Not in the European countries I know
It’s a class/culture issue rather than an urban planning issue. I grew up in a car-dependent suburb in the 1990s, and in the summer I used to spend all day roving around the neighborhood with the neighbor kids. Kids in the same suburb don’t do that today, because parents are more protective, kids are glued to screens, etc.
Anecdotally, the people I have in my life who are the most afraid of leaving their kids alone are suburbanites.
Yes, and recently in USA. A handful of times I had a tinge of worry when they were gone much of the day, and they returned better than I could have planned it. One occasion I recall they hiked to a lake and had packed backpacks with lunches water sunscreen. It was my brain that worried, and a joy to watch the children grow and explore!
The mother next door, apprehensive about rogue police, instructed her children that if they see the police to run home and don't stop. There is no recourse when the cops crack skulls, so it's best to stay out of their grip.
As a kid grown up in the smartphone era (I’m 18 now), these words of yours hurt my soul. Me and all of my friends are smartphone addicts. Everyone I know are using their smartphone as much as the rest of their life allows. But ofc, your brains are not messed up enough, so you don’t understand and you’re gonna just let your be consumed by it.
Seriously, go read the works of the world-renowned psychologist Jonathan Haidt. https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/
I’m deeply sorry with every person whose life is literally wasted for that sweet $1/user/month ad money.
I cannot express my sadness for the next generation who are literally born into it and grow up with YouTube Kids. Thank God at least I lived about 12 years of real life.
No pre-set plan, no parental supervision, just a “I’m going to go meet my friends on this summer day, I’ll be back before dinner.” For purposes of illustration, assume these kids are aged 9-14, or thereabouts. Too young to drive, too old to be doted over every minute of the day.
If you would (and I hope you would!), would their friends’ parents? Would they be able to go casually knock on their friends’ doors (or even neighbors’ doors), be it biking or walking, and socialize, like kids do?
My guess is probably not. And that’s not the kids’ doing— that’s OUR doing. If parents really wanted their kids to go outside and explore, that would be the norm. But for far too many kids it’s not, because parents don’t want it to be: they’re worried about their kid getting hit by a car, kidnapped, getting in trouble, learning a lesson, the list goes on and on. The built environment reflects that kids are not expected to be outside, as if we’ve kid-proofed it. And so even if you want your kid to play outside, no one else is, and of course no kid wants to play alone!
Ironically, you would probably see more kids out and about, safe to be kids, in gasp New York City than in “safe” suburbia, from my own anecdotal experience.