IMO we need to go back to this. The problem with kids today is they are missing out on the crucial part of childhood where you develop life skills and social skills that can only be learned by playing unsupervised with other kids. Helicopter parenting is actively impeding normal development. I know 25 year olds who are scared to go outside and who cannot keep jobs because their parents never let them go out alone.
Our kids (2nd and 5th grade) go to friends houses, the park, hang out by a pond, bike /scooter around. I agree. They just seem like they are supposed to be in nature, idk.
this sentiment in the thread has to be local or at least somewhat local, in general, kids i see have no issues with things like that. things that i see have changed are there but i feel like the shift is lesser globally than presented in this thread. where do you guys mostly live?
i have an impression that ages and parent behaviors reported here have to be localized. for example, if i was going to a supermarket at 5 and my friend's kid now goes to a supermarket at 7, there is a difference but it's not vast. it is a big one, there is a big difference between 5 and 7 effectively, but whatever. but this entire thread makes me think kids where you live do that at like 12 which yeah, that does sound crazy.
this sentiment seems to come from the US a lot. I have never been visited, but through osmosis, my impression was always that this isn't really a new thing, for example, I remember there was talk about this even as far as the eighties and early nineties. through people sharing their stories through forums or even in the movies ("oh you took a train by yourself and you're 14" type of thing). there was probably some shift there in the eighties or so that people don't remember (perhaps a schooling overhaul or something like that). I am also seeing many americans being surprised at posts from other countries where kids walk to school or take city bus etc.
Well, all the serial killers in the 70s, 80s, and 90s definitely made people a lot less trusting of strangers so there was a shift then. But kids were playing out in the streets in the 2000s and 2010s still, a lot more than they are today. Most people my age and a little younger had the experience of spending hours upon hours outside every day, the shift to kids rarely venturing out unsupervised happened more like 2015. The cause in my experience was heatwaves have been getting more and more extreme in the summers, making it unbearable and often even unsafe to be outside during the day. And most households have AC, at least one gaming console, and every kid has a smart phone now. There used to be bowling alleys, movie theaters, and arcades, but most have closed, and those that haven't charge more than a kid will get in a weekly allowance.
The other issue is the states just don't have the public transit infrastructure that most developed countries have, and as a result we don't have many public squares or places designed around foot traffic. Outdoor parks do exist but a lot of them are not within walking or biking distance so a kid has to be driven there. Places like malls actively discourage kids and teenagers from going there, a lot of them use inhospitable architecture and speakers that play high-pitched noises with the goal of keeping anyone too young to have their own money away. A lot of roads that business are on are also extremely dangerous to pedestrians and bike riders. Our car-centric infrastructure really makes it hard for kids to experience the outside world unless their parent is paying for some sort of special experience. The vast majority of kids are driven to and from school and then sit inside and either doomscroll, play videogames, or watch TV. Sure, you can ride your bike around in circles on your suburban street, but the neighbor's dogs will bark at you nonstop and there's nowhere to really ride your bike to that a kid would want to go.
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u/Lythaera Sep 11 '26
IMO we need to go back to this. The problem with kids today is they are missing out on the crucial part of childhood where you develop life skills and social skills that can only be learned by playing unsupervised with other kids. Helicopter parenting is actively impeding normal development. I know 25 year olds who are scared to go outside and who cannot keep jobs because their parents never let them go out alone.