Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where do the children play?

unpublishablepapers.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 264 posts

Re: Where do the children play?

#41

Post by stevekemp »

CalRobert wrote: post #12
emil-lp wrote: post #6

> Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult This is really not representative for other Western countries. Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do. > In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered. I think the author…

Where are you from? I would say that seems accurate for Ireland, for instance.

I live in Finland, and here the kids mostly walk to/from their schools themselves and that starts around age 7.

Sometimes the kids walk alone, sometimes they pickup friends en route, or they have to take a bus/tram.

Re: Where do the children play?

#42

Post by nerdponx »

fainpul wrote: post #29
emil-lp wrote: post #6

> Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult This is really not representative for other Western countries. Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do. > In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered. I think the author…

I think a lot of this simply depends on the distance between home and school (or other places kids need to go to) – so it's the difference between a compact city and sprawling suburbs. Where I live (central Europe), the density of public elementary schools in cities is high, so kids walk there alone. The density of secondary schools is lower, so most kids use bicycles or trams / buses. Interestingly, there are a few…

Having grown up and gone to school exclusively in the USA I always thought it was crazy how many parents preferred to drive their kids to school instead of having them take the bus. By high school I would guess that less than half of kids actually got to school by bus despite them all being part of the bus pickup network.

Re: Where do the children play?

#43

Post by nerdponx »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #28
zkmon wrote: post #15

There were reasons for the contrast with Western world. Safety and risk aversion is a major reason. City living means we don't know what the other person on the road is thinking. This was not the case in small villages or tribal settlements. Everyone knows about every move of the others. The whole community is like a single creature with many arms. The other reason is, prosperity means more affordability to avoid ris…

> City living means we don't know what the other person on the road is thinking. Usually something like "I hope I'm not late for my job" or "The weather is shit today". Other people aren't that scary.

"I how I'm not late" is a bad mix when operating heavy machinery like a car around places where children are supposed to be able to walk safely.

Re: Where do the children play?

#44

Post by qweiopqweiop »

reeredfdfdf wrote: post #33
retube wrote: post #19

As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece. When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhe…

There's a middle-ground between a big city and full countryside. I lived my childhood in a place with about 4000 people in it. School, friends and everything else I needed was within walking, or at least biking distance. My parents didn't have to drive me everywhere. Obviously there weren't as many possible hobbies and events as in big cities, but mobility wasn't an issue.

Likewise. All my friends were within cycling distance and we had nature to play in. Personally I can't imagine growing up in a city like London.

Re: Where do the children play?

#45

Post by wongarsu »

reeredfdfdf wrote: post #33
retube wrote: post #19

As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece. When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhe…

There's a middle-ground between a big city and full countryside. I lived my childhood in a place with about 4000 people in it. School, friends and everything else I needed was within walking, or at least biking distance. My parents didn't have to drive me everywhere. Obviously there weren't as many possible hobbies and events as in big cities, but mobility wasn't an issue.

Smaller cities with about 40k-200k inhabitants can also be a nice sweet spot: big enough to have a decent number of events and hobby opportunities, small enough that you have low-traffic sidestreets within walking distance of the city center, and nature is still very much in reach

Assuming a European city layout where a city center exists and the 200k inhabitants aren't all spread out into suburban sprawl. Suburbia quickly kills the idea of walking and biking distances

Re: Where do the children play?

#46

Post by ErigmolCt »

The tragedy isn't just that they're doing this online, it's that it's the only place left. We paved over their physical freedom, then panic when they carve out virtual freedom we can't supervise. And ironically, we moralize their digital behavior while ignoring the real-world conditions that pushed them there in the first place

Re: Where do the children play?

#47

Post by cachius »

lnsru wrote: post #10
seqizz wrote: post #5

Reading the US 8-12 year olds' stats made me flinch, because as someone grow up in the middle east this is inconceivable. I guess I'll dive into rabbit hole about modern-day stats of Europe and other places to compare.

Same phone addiction in Europe as elsewhere. No way to fight addictive stuff. Most parents don’t even try or care. Add tragic demographics and 8-12 year olds are all alone with their phones. Let’s talk about special school system here in Bavaria (Germany). Kids from specific area go to same school for the first 4 grades. Afterwards they are divided between little geniuses going into „Gymnsasium“, average ones going t…

The founders of the Miniaturwunderland Hamburg were in the media describing how they push back against smartphones and media in their family life: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/ndr-talk-show/miniatur-wun...

Strange coincidence: shortly after they were hacked https://www.borncity.com/blog/2025/11/12/miniatur-wunderland...

Re: Where do the children play?

#48

Post by dukeyukey »

retube wrote: post #19

As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece. When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhe…

You're more thinking suburban, or super rural. I grew up in a rural Welsh town (~3000 people), and was is walking distance of basically everyone we knew. I walked to school, to the pool, to the shops, my friends, everything.

Re: Where do the children play?

#49

Post by zkmon »

bell-cot wrote: post #36
zkmon wrote: post #15

There were reasons for the contrast with Western world. Safety and risk aversion is a major reason. City living means we don't know what the other person on the road is thinking. This was not the case in small villages or tribal settlements. Everyone knows about every move of the others. The whole community is like a single creature with many arms. The other reason is, prosperity means more affordability to avoid ris…

> City living means we don't know what the other person on the road is thinking. This was not the case in... I'd explain it this way: City living means that we don't know the other person, and they don't know us. The affects both driver behavior - 99% of people are more careful driving around pedestrians and other drivers who they know - and our perception of driver risks. "Chris who's always lived at 3rd and Cherry"…

Actually, when I wrote "road" I was thinking of roads full of pedestrians. Not cars and drivers.

Re: Where do the children play?

#50

Post by danielbln »

b112 wrote: post #35
AndrewDavis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an aside. Yesterday I was in a shopping centre (ie a mall) and a bunch of kids ran through the food court, maybe 10 of them all around the 9-12 A grumpy lady shouted at them "kids you shouldnt be running!" I turned to whom I was eating with and our discussion could be summarised as "kids should be running. The problem isn't they're running, the problem isn't even directly where they're running. Where they're…

No? I grew up in a rural area, with fields and places to run... and run I did. A nearby huge city had a mall. City being 30k people. Yet left in that mall, with 10 friends, I'd run there too.. until chastised. No real difference 50 years ago, in a rural area with a mall than now. Groups of kids running tend to bump into things, fall into people, excited kids aren't known for taking care. It's been typical for at leas…

I don't disagree with you, but the fact that something has been done since the 50s when it comes to child care is not necessarily an indicator that it's good. We imposed many things on children during that time that would be widely considered damaging and counter productive today.
Post reply on HN