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What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

theatlantic.com

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Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#51

Post by lm28469 »

Jyaif wrote: post #30
mtalantikite wrote: post #23

> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our…

Your testimony is quite literally survivor bias. What would not be survivor bias is you telling us what happened to the kids around you.

Literally nothing ? because statistically speaking they virtually all survived. And of the ones that did not survive the extreme vast majority didn't die because they were "playing outside"

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#52

Post by thefaux »

dcow wrote: post #17
techdmn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard a few things on this. One is that there were a few high profile but very bad cases in the 80s, kids getting kidnapped and trafficked with law enforcement not really willing to even look into it. The odds are infinitesimal, but the cost of the negative outcome is very, very high. Second is kids getting run over by cars. Comparatively that happens all the time. Third is a general breakdown of social connecti…

Do kids really get hit by cars at a level that would materially impact the “let them play in the park” calculus?

When I was a kid in the 90s, I knew multiple kids who were severely injured by cars. For whatever reason, this did not seem to have any impact on my mother's parenting and no new limits were placed on my freedom as a result. For the record though, one of the kids I knew who was hit was leaving the property of their school with plenty of adult supervision around at the time of the collision (and received a large settlement from the school).

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#53

Post by bryanlarsen »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #44
bryanlarsen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a fairly continuous change since WW2, I think. https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/v8cyi7/map_compar...

My theory is that it has something to do with infant mortality and family size. Kids are seen as more precious now, so they are protected from every possible danger. This is probably quite negative for the kids though.

I can't imagine hardening myself enough to be able to accept a 10% - 50% chance of losing a child before the age of 5.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#54

Post by [deleted] »

mtalantikite wrote: post #23

> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our…

[deleted]

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#55

Post by amanaplanacanal »

mattmanser wrote: post #46
throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The whole stranger danger thing in my view as an adult feels like a downward spiral. It's not like this in many countries. In the UK it's kind of like - kids don't wander about alone because they might run into baddies, and now adults are afraid to interact with kids because they might be seen as a baddy, and this kind of loops around until no-one is interacting. Basically, it's like any adult man is seen as a potent…

Unfortunately it's not a tiny, tiny fraction. I thought this too once then looked up the stats. It's horrifying when you find out. It's 1 in 20 children get sexually abused in the UK at the moment for example, and we have loads of checks and safe guards. And waiting until they get sectioned/locked up, that means someone else has to suffer potentially life-long trauma.

That sexual abuse is overwhelmingly from family and trusted family friends, not from strangers.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#56

Post by lm28469 »

zabzonk wrote: post #28

Anyone know when this all changed? At the age of 5 I used to walk to school alone without me or my parents worrying. That would have been about 1958/9.

Depends on the country, I was in eastern europe over winter and there were kids sledging by themselves between buildings, on the local hill, &c. some weren't much older than 5. That was in the second largest city of the country, not some small village where people know everyone.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#57

Post by assimpleaspossi »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The whole stranger danger thing in my view as an adult feels like a downward spiral. It's not like this in many countries. In the UK it's kind of like - kids don't wander about alone because they might run into baddies, and now adults are afraid to interact with kids because they might be seen as a baddy, and this kind of loops around until no-one is interacting. Basically, it's like any adult man is seen as a potent…

I was at a gathering of distant relatives I had never met before. I struck up a conversation with the 15-year old daughter of a cousin whose aunt came running on up with a stern look on her face that made me feel like she thought I was a child molester.

That this was a family gathering I was invited to for honoring my close relative who passed away just made me very sad.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#58

Post by hombre_fatal »

kevingadd wrote: post #3

> Since the 1980s, parents have grown more and more afraid that unsupervised time will expose their kids to physical or emotional harm. In another recent Harris Poll, we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. > These intuitions don’t even beg…

I reckon there's also a feedback loop where places have fewer kids running around for these reasons so you don't want to be among the first to release your kids there especially as a new parent.

Compared to moving in to a place that already has kids running around doing things.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#59

Post by uoaei »

mtalantikite wrote: post #23

> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our…

I encounter similar sentiments constantly across the internet. One thing we as humans have a lot of trouble with is understanding the scope of experience that isn't commented on in public forums. When we consider comments on the internet to be a representative sample of reality, we get a very warped view of what might happen to us when we step out the door. This paranoia and anxiety is evident in the proliferation of surveillance technologies, etc., and is completely contrary to the obvious decline in crime rates pretty much everywhere.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#60

Post by gjadi »

closewith wrote: post #25
throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The whole stranger danger thing in my view as an adult feels like a downward spiral. It's not like this in many countries. In the UK it's kind of like - kids don't wander about alone because they might run into baddies, and now adults are afraid to interact with kids because they might be seen as a baddy, and this kind of loops around until no-one is interacting. Basically, it's like any adult man is seen as a potent…

In the UK, about 5% of children have been sexually abused. Nobody wants to risk that happening to their children and it's mostly perpetrated by people known to the children, so trust is understandably at an all time low.

But since it's mostly by people close to the children, the fear of the stranger is not justified.
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