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Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

afterbabel.com

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All in all, this is not science It's not trying to be. The intended audience is not peers reading a research journal, it's normal folks and policy makers who don't know what a confounding variable is but still want to make modern life suck less.

I think it's trying to appear to be science. They want the appearance of legitimacy and objectivity to encourage a particular position. A quick read through of the site shows it's a conservative-leaning group, and I'd be willing to bet that sooner-or-later they'll be pushing "a return to traditional values" as the cure for all our ills.

A quick read through of the site shows it's a conservative-leaning group,

this is neat, using guilt by association to support a comment alleging the fallacy of guilt by association

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#42
post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

You're also putting Europe on a pedestal. In many urban areas (where the majority of the population lives) it's no longer safe for kids to walk + bike to school freely. Not necessarily because of cars but significant crime.

Is it no longer safe there? Because in the states parents have been restricting kids a lot more severely just as crime in cities plummeted (mid 90s--present). So I imagine it's either perceptions about safety, or parents just being more careful.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#43
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you seriously implying that immigration is responsible for a sudden reduction in public trust? american immigration has been a thing for 300 years

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the audience isn't technical enough to realize the author excluded confounders, doesn't that make it even worse?

Confounders or not, kids don't have crap for communities. They have 24/7 adulting, most of it spent in one building or another. source:5 kids. source:15 years scout leader. source:10 years youth leader, other.

I hear a lot about excessive parenting on here but I wonder if it's just a segment of society. Can anyone but wealthy parents have time to occupy their kids 24-7? The freedom I and friends had as a kid was not a decision of my parents so much as a necessity. Parents dont get home from work until 6, school lets out at 2, we get at least 4 free hours of undisturbed freedom. Why would that be different now?

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the audience isn't technical enough to realize the author excluded confounders, doesn't that make it even worse?

Confounders or not, kids don't have crap for communities. They have 24/7 adulting, most of it spent in one building or another. source:5 kids. source:15 years scout leader. source:10 years youth leader, other.

Add on top of that the communities they do have are all virtual. Virtual groups are a fine addition to, but not a good replacement for physical interaction.

Being in physical proximity is just a fundamentally different experience. I remember rather fondly the days of LAN parties, and a small part of me wishes we had kept the networking without going all the way to the Internet.

Yes, the irony of this post, and my career as primarily a developer of websites, is not lost on me.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#46
post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

You're also putting Europe on a pedestal. In many urban areas (where the majority of the population lives) it's no longer safe for kids to walk + bike to school freely. Not necessarily because of cars but significant crime.

guess what kills the most children, criminals or cars?

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#47
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you seriously implying that immigration is responsible for a sudden reduction in public trust? american immigration has been a thing for 300 years

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All in all, this is not science It's not trying to be. The intended audience is not peers reading a research journal, it's normal folks and policy makers who don't know what a confounding variable is but still want to make modern life suck less.

I think it's trying to appear to be science. They want the appearance of legitimacy and objectivity to encourage a particular position. A quick read through of the site shows it's a conservative-leaning group, and I'd be willing to bet that sooner-or-later they'll be pushing "a return to traditional values" as the cure for all our ills.

I think it's trying to appear to be science.

This is fairly common in modern rhetoric. Even among scientists—they’ll write a rigorous paper with narrowly drawn conclusions and then give a much broader science-y interview about it.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#49
post #6

Apologies for being critical, but this reads like the author had a conclusion they wanted to reach and worked backward to some flashy graphs to make it work (the right side of the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" spectrum). There is no discussion of confounders, no control groups or paired studies, and there are million things correlated with the last 50 of societal development years besides the topics mentioned her…

> had a conclusion they wanted to reach and worked backward . . . to make it work

Also known as "motivated reasoning."

For what it's worth, it doesn't match what I see here in flyover country. Helicopter parenting came first, then loss of community; loss of kids in the neighborhood playing. I think the helicopter parenting was due to lots of pressure to "protect" the kids. I've even heard of police responding to calls about children walking without adults!

The article seems to want to blame tech for a social problem. I guess that gets clicks.

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