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How getting richer made teenagers less free

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Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#41

Post by walthamstow »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #27
myko wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an 80s kid, I was playing outside at age 6 unsupervised / with my friends. I feel like this should be pretty normal and totally agree with your last line: What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?

I teach my kids their biggest risk is a driver distracted by their phone in a vehicle with a hood height at or above the kids’ head height.

Accurate. Oddly enough on this side of the pond most people who would not want to raise their kids in the US would mention school shootings. The real, ubiquitous, daily danger is massive cars and lazy drivers.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#42

Post by dns_snek »

TrackerFF wrote: post #15

I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, and came from a rural place with a lot of poverty and at best working class people. We'd be outside all day long - being inside was considered a privilege. Weekdays and weekends. Decades later, most of my peers have middle-class jobs. Their kids are barely outside. Their parents are involved with them from morning to evening, or chauffeuring them between sports and other extracurr…

> Interestingly, I've heard from parents that many feel like they're both suffocating and feeling inadequate, at the same time. While many kids, both teens and younger, reporting that they're not getting enough space.

Is that surprising? All of that sounds fully consistent to me when parents suffocate their kids with expectations and activities instead of meeting their actual needs.

They feel like they're suffocating them because they are, they feel inadequate because deep down they know it's wrong, and kids feel like they're not getting enough space because they aren't.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#43

Post by CalRobert »

For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently, sometimes with a football (soccerball) or fishing rod in tow. And this is a pretty wealthy area by most standards.

Here's a good livestream from my town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXqogC2zk4 (I share the livestream because that makes it harder to say it's cherrypicked)

Or here's a more polished, edited video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TuGAHR78w

We literally covered the world in asphalt ribbons of death and then we wonder why kids don't play outside.

What's crazy is how many kids are killed by drivers even _after_ kids stopped playing outside. It's like if the number of swimmers fell by 90% and drownings went _up_.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#44

Post by everdrive »

komali2 wrote: post #5
starsky411 wrote: post #2

This remind me of that saying - no original version but it was like: tough times makes tough people, soft times makes soft people. And I hope it’s not true. But indeed the more choices you have in life, the harder it gets to chose the right thing to do.

Good times make soft men, bad times make hard men. I never quite understood what the implication was and I always questioned the historical accuracy because no part of history is so easily defined as "good time" or "bad time."

Like basically every truism, it's a broad generalization and when you pick it apart you find all sorts of cases where the terms are loosely defined or else the truism just doesn't fit. There is at least something to be said here, and this is something of an adaptation of Ibn Khaldun's work on the concept of "asabiyyah" in the Muqaddima. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun#al-Muqaddima_and_t...

From the Wikipedia summary:

"The work is based around Ibn Khaldun's central concept of aṣabiyyah, translated as "group cohesiveness" or "solidarity".[41] This social cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Ibn Khaldun's analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds – psychological, sociological, economic, political – of the group's downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion."

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#45

Post by dirkc »

CalRobert wrote: post #43

For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently, sometimes with a football (soccerball) or fishing rod in tow. And this is a pretty wealthy area by most standards. Here's a good livestream from my town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXqogC2zk4 (I share the livestream because that makes it harder to say it's cherrypicked…

I recently had a trip to NL and was very surprised to see jobs for children being advertised there!

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#46

Post by CalRobert »

squeefers wrote: post #24
komali2 wrote: post #3

> When teenagers aren’t trusted to walk over to a friend’s house or play in the park, when they almost never have a part-time job where they can earn a paycheck and meet expectations that aren’t purely artificial, then I think it’s much harder for them to have a realistic, non-algorithm-driven worldview and concrete life goals they can work toward. This, and the car-centric design of the American suburb, I think are…

> so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan. because the sidewalk was next to a busy road? sounds like a bit of a reach

Aside from the fact that drivers have been known to mount sidewalks (especially while sending a text), the real problem is intersections, and crossing said stroads. When there's 8 lanes of Dodge Rams, Chevy Silverados, and F-250's with hoods that are taller than your head you're putting a great deal of trust in the red lamp overhead to actually stop them from killing you.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#47

Post by lotsofpulp »

nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #29
squeefers wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan. because the sidewalk was next to a busy road? sounds like a bit of a reach

sidewalk ended apparently. i am imagining some super hostile urban planning. like did a cyclist cheat with the planner's spouse? is there not another route?

Streetview almost any US suburb. There often is not a way to safely cross a 60ft+ wide road with a 40mph speed limit (which means large vehicles with distracted drivers are driving 50mph+.

Almost all businesses are located on these wide roads, and neighborhoods basically become islands for the kids. It’s especially bad in the winter, because it gets dark quicker, and crossing that 60ft+ wide 40mph+ road gets dicey even as an adult.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#48

Post by CalRobert »

dirkc wrote: post #45
CalRobert wrote: post #43

For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently, sometimes with a football (soccerball) or fishing rod in tow. And this is a pretty wealthy area by most standards. Here's a good livestream from my town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXqogC2zk4 (I share the livestream because that makes it harder to say it's cherrypicked…

I recently had a trip to NL and was very surprised to see jobs for children being advertised there!

Hah, was it Dirk by any chance? (Give your username)

There's a lot of kids stocking shelves in the stores here. It's a great way for them to be responsible and earn a few extra euro. I think it's great that the Dutch don't treat their 15 and 16 year olds like babies, like American parents do.

I just wish this were available to more families.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#49

Post by slifin »

reedf1 wrote: post #10

> Around 35% of American families have been investigated by CPS What?? > Fully 50% of Black voters in our poll agreed that allowing a 10-year-old to play unsupervised at a park for a few hours was grounds for a CPS call. 33% of white voters and 37% of Hispanic voters said the same. I am speechless. Has so much changed in the 20 odd years since I was a kid? I was playing outside unsupervised from maybe age 9. What hon…

Cars, I nearly got run over as a kid a few times

Now as an adult I'd be worried about cycling around with cars that would hit me in the chest and not the legs on impact

Also cars make it very easy for a stranger to pull up and kidnap, parents subconsciously know that and factor it into their decisions

There was also youth clubs where I grew up and a BMX track and no phones so play was mostly happening outside

Society is going to continue to degrading as long as debts keep increasing

Debts will keep increasing because the only way to create new money is everytime someone gets a loan the bank injects the principle into the economy but then expects interest on top so there will never be enough money in the economy for everyone to pay off all their debts

We'll either get mass debt forgiveness or societal collapse and so far we've opted for societal collapse

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