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

afterbabel.com

161–170 of 480 posts

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

#161
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…

> 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

What you're missing is that they've already published the papers and books with all of the citations, these are accessible articles for the masses reviewing their conclusions.

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because they’re still far better drivers than us.

It's amazing to see in China too ... cars pulling out everywhere in front of each other, weaving in and out of traffic. However I suspect there are less road accidents there per capita than here in Australia since everybody there has to pay attention and is patient with other drivers. Australian drivers either tune out or are too aggressive (road rage) and cause more accidents.

Having lived in Europe, Asia, North America and Australia, Australia seems to me by far the worst drivers. Incredibly aggressive, insane speeding and road rage, everywhere, all the time. And it’s not just tolerated, it’s completely normal and accepted, even considered cool and encouraged. Just what.

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

#163
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 car…

> 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. Why not?

If you're being serious, then you're suggesting that it would be perfectly healthy for a person to literally just lie in bed all day and only interact with people virtually.

If you think that isn't healthy, then you are acknowledging that virtual groups are not a replacement for physical interaction, even if you disagree with others on how much physical interaction is required.

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

#164

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

It's conservative-leaning because...?

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

#165
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Why not?

If you're being serious, then you're suggesting that it would be perfectly healthy for a person to literally just lie in bed all day and only interact with people virtually. If you think that isn't healthy, then you are acknowledging that virtual groups are not a replacement for physical interaction, even if you disagree with others on how much physical interaction is required.

I don't believe that's what I suggested at all. I believe I asked GP why they believed what they said.

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

#166
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter has been playing outside since she was 4 years old, unsupervised. She's 9 now. A lot of the other neighborhood kids have followed suit (I really suspect our "benign neglect" made the other parents thing "well if nothing bad happened to her our kids will be fine" and we have about 8-10 kids around the same age on the block that are constantly going to each other's houses and hanging out doing whatever it i…

9pm and you don’t know where your 9 year old is? That going too far in the other direction in my opinion. How is she doing academically? I feel like that much freedom, that early, makes it easy to pick up bad habits with the “bad” kids.

It’s summer (no school) and it’s not dark until a little after 9PM, in my mid-latitude part of the continental US.

“Bye, have fun, come in when the street lights come on” is entirely appropriate for a 9-year-old when school’s not in session. It’s playing outside, not playing fortnight or drooling to the YouTube algo. It’s ok for that to run a little late in the summer.

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

#167
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my prewar non-car-centric city, kids still walk to school. They don't play outside like previous generations. You'll see the Christmas bikes for a few weeks when it's warm enough in late spring then nothing all summer long.

As a parent, I can tell you video games and smart phones have a lot to do with this.

Some speculate it's a consequence, not a reason. When most of the environment is poorly designed, lack of third places, lots of dangerous cars, big distances, no sidewalks, parent supervision etc... it's natural they started using phones more when these arrived: it gave options to socialize without encountering all the impediments

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

#168
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, no teenagers or adults die by cars, for they have developed mentally enough for cars not to be a threat to them …Except the 40 000 who do die by car, every single year, in the US alone. Countless more injured and permanently disabled. Meanwhile criminals are indeed a whole different problem. (an imaginary one)

[flagged]

Your point was car's are no longer a problem once kids grow up which is a total bs. If you wanted to say something else, it's your fault you didn't comvey your thoughts in a proper way

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9pm and you don’t know where your 9 year old is? That going too far in the other direction in my opinion. How is she doing academically? I feel like that much freedom, that early, makes it easy to pick up bad habits with the “bad” kids.

I mean this happens with my 9 year old. We have a parent group chat and just ask who knows where the crew is

That’s technology working to bring people together rather than driving them apart

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

#170
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…

I always wonder if part of it is how much we move around for life these days. We travel away from our home towns for college, the somewhere else in many cases for work where we have kids without our parents around to help. Let this happen to enough people constantly coming and going and moving…the community is gone. It’s just a cumulative effect.

I believe that this is a much larger contributor than many realize. Moving is a total reset for the individual and a hole left behind for the town moved out of.
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