Safetyism is a contributing cause, but children have far fewer siblings than they used to. This means it's harder to go outside semi-supervised, and parents are more protective of their kids because there are fewer of them. Differences in reproductive strategies result in differences of parental care.
Safetyism killed playtime
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Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#12I broke 3 arms while I was a kid. I was lucky I didn't break a neck. I think safetyism is just fine.
Are you lucky, or are necks less likely to break than arms due to evolutionary pressure?
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#13I broke 3 arms while I was a kid. I was lucky I didn't break a neck. I think safetyism is just fine.
I think think the argument is cut and dry as one might think. What's a few broken bones if you're stunted socially, independently, and creatively through regulation and rules. Exploring the new world with friends of your own age without adults putting you in their mental box makes you your own person. I think it's underappreciated what that enables.
Completely agree, the point of life isn't to reduce risk to zero - it's to make life wildly abundant and beautiful. Joy and creativity should be prioritized heavily over safety. That doesn't mean you don't have safety as a priority, it just means joy should factor more heavily into the equation.
I doubt much progress and improvement would be made simply by increasing lifespan. Comparatively, if you inspire a generation of kids to be pioneers and explorers I imagine you see a vast improvement in technological advancements and social progress.
These things are hard, if not impossible, to measure, but I don't think it takes too much extrapolation from other measurable events to find this to be true.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#14Canadian Paediatric Society published this last week: https://cps.ca/en/documents/position/outdoor-risky-play
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#15Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#16I don't think I get the point.
Creative, unstructured play and safety aren't mutually exclusive. A kid doesn't need to get a third degree burn or break an arm to "play better", and those are mostly avoidable risks.
The article also missed on developing this piece of information:
> In urbanised environments, where land is at an all-time premium, finding a place to run around can be a challenge. One in eight children don’t have a garden and nearly 800 playgrounds have closed in the past decade.
The reason why modern playgrounds are sort of "guided" and "safe", is that the very few places they are allowed to be built, are those where "guided" and "safe" are requirements. Kids in an urban environment cannot really play football in the playground because first, there's no enough room for it, and second, the rules of these playgrounds themselves forbid it, as they are written to protect property and lower ownership risks.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you lucky, or are necks less likely to break than arms due to evolutionary pressure?
Could just be survivor bias. I wouldn't be posting here if my neck had broken, most likely.
Also, children are suprisingly resilient and will recover quite easily most of the time.
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think think the argument is cut and dry as one might think. What's a few broken bones if you're stunted socially, independently, and creatively through regulation and rules. Exploring the new world with friends of your own age without adults putting you in their mental box makes you your own person. I think it's underappreciated what that enables.
Completely agree, the point of life isn't to reduce risk to zero - it's to make life wildly abundant and beautiful. Joy and creativity should be prioritized heavily over safety. That doesn't mean you don't have safety as a priority, it just means joy should factor more heavily into the equation. I doubt much progress and improvement would be made simply by increasing lifespan. Comparatively, if you inspire a generati…
Super nice. What books/ideas do you recommend?
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#19I lived a pretty “safe” childhood, and was basically addicted to video games from 5 years old (when the Nintendo Gameboy was released), but notably I still experienced plenty of boredom and unstructured play.
I had a friend 10 minute walk down the street whose parents enforced a certain number of hours outside per day. So he would call me on the phone, we would meet halfway, and then we would wander around the sidewalk and talk about video games or make pretend imaginary things.
I can only imagine in todays technology landscape I would have preferred to stay home glued to YouTube on my iPad instead of seeing my friend; beating Pokémon Red for the 100th time didn’t quite have the draw by comparison
Re: Safetyism killed playtime
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could just be survivor bias. I wouldn't be posting here if my neck had broken, most likely.
Also, children are suprisingly resilient and will recover quite easily most of the time.
The bounce back game is real as a kid.
Maybe it's all about mass. The force on my knees landing at 200lbs is way greater than at 50lbs.
But maybe I'm just trying not to feel old.