Re:What Constant Surveillance Is Doing to Children
by WarOnPrivacy on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @08:18PM
(#50448660)
The eradication of critical childhood environments has severely degraded the experience for kids and parents alike.
My parents parented a few hours a week; most of my hours were spent in development - those many hours that were free of adults.
My kids grew up under 24/7 adulting. They had little of the opportunity I had to grow ambition, problem solving skills and basic independence. It was traded for car culture, trespassing culture and extreme beliefs about stranger risk that didn't reflect actual reality.
In trade, I spent 20x the time parenting that my parents did. We parents spent hours trying to manually recreate (via camps, events) the slivers of the childhood that we experienced organically. As good as they were, they didn't come close to replacing what adults took away.
The end result, I have 5 adult sons and will probably never have grandchildren. Besides being economically impossible for a couple to support themselves on typical wages, parenting is immeasurably more complex and time consuming than what my parents experienced.
In short, parents give way more and kids get way less.
My parents parented a few hours a week; most of my hours were spent in development - those many hours that were free of adults.
My kids grew up under 24/7 adulting. They had little of the opportunity I had to grow ambition, problem solving skills and basic independence. It was traded for car culture, trespassing culture and extreme beliefs about stranger risk that didn't reflect actual reality.
In trade, I spent 20x the time parenting that my parents did. We parents spent hours trying to manually recreate (via camps, events) the slivers of the childhood that we experienced organically. As good as they were, they didn't come close to replacing what adults took away.
The end result, I have 5 adult sons and will probably never have grandchildren. Besides being economically impossible for a couple to support themselves on typical wages, parenting is immeasurably more complex and time consuming than what my parents experienced.
In short, parents give way more and kids get way less.