Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

(Yes, this means that a large part of housing prices in these urban areas is driven by parents or soon-to-be-parents fighting over the housing that exists in the catchment areas of the best public schools.)

This is usually combined in civic planning with a "service radius" around the school, to decide when new schools are needed (vs. just expanding existing schools.) For rural areas, the service radius is defined by practicable bus pickup loops (you don't want a bus that takes an hour to get to the school); but in dense urban areas, that radius is usually defined by walkability — on little child-sized legs!

The combination of the concepts of "catchment area" + "service radius" means that if you live in a city in one of these countries, it's almost impossible that you're going to live somewhere where your child fundamentally cannot walk to school (purely in terms of distance.) Which is a major reason why everyone makes fun of people in cities in the US (which uses both of these concepts in most municipalities) for driving their kids to school, when that school is by law a distance away that the kid could walk.

(I know that the problem in the US often isn't the distance, but what's between the home and the school — dangerous major thoroughfares with no sidewalks cutting through neighbourhoods and the like. Which is still the US being dumb; just on a different level.)

I'm in my mid-30's and I feel like I've seen the change in my time. Some parents of kids my age were of the helicopter variety, but that was more of an exception.

Most parents I know now have kids that would have been considered stunted or even developmentally challenged when I was their kid's age. I don't know how to describe it except to say that they lack any sort of agency and act about half their age (this may say more about my expectations). I think there are a lot of factors that go into this, like having a 24/7 tether to your parents with a smartphone (and parents that encourage this), social media and news cycles that emphasize fear and anger (that affects both the parents and the child), the "safetyism" of post-Columbine-and-9/11 America, growing authoritarianism across the political spectrum, slight deviations from behavioral norms being medicalized and requiring adjustment, and children generally being deprived of autonomy and responsibility at nearly every opportunity by removing almost any potential for things to go wrong or get difficult (IMO, dealing with these situations may be the fundamental life skill).

Most kids these days have no grit and they shut down at the slightest whiff of adversity, it's like learned helplessness, except I don't think they ever learned to help themselves in the first place because their parents prevented it. They need some sort of authority figure and to be told what they're supposed to do, think, and feel.

I know some people in my age group that are like this. They had helicopter parents, and it's like they completely stopped developing as a person in their teens. They practically can't wipe their own ass without calling their parents and asking how.