I have a ten year old daughter in NYC, and I’m probably one of the types of parents who many here are castigating. I’m not ready for her to go out and explore the city on her own. Here’s what I worry about:

- cars: she’s not always the most present and aware, and it takes one mistake to ruin or end her life.

- bikes and scooters: less dangerous in some ways, but more ubiquitous and unpredictable than cars

- sexual harassment: she’s only ten, but sadly in some neighborhoods, that’s old enough that she’s likely to get hassled. That’s a sad fact of life she’ll have to deal with at some point, but I’m not ready yet

- bullying: I had several encounters with groups of older kids when I was off free-ranging as a kid

- subway: some deranged homeless person throws someone off the platform or stabs someone every week here

I could go on, but the bottom line is that the potential harm outweighs the potential benefit for me right now. In my mind there’s no right answer here, just pros and cons. Appealing to how things were a century ago, or even when I grew up, is pretty irrelevant. My daughter might mature a couple years later than I did, and I can live with that.

Also, I’m just pretty fundamentally unimpressed with most moral panics. “The Anxious Generation” seems like just the latest entry in a tradition stretching thousands of years where people worry about how the changes in society are ruining the next generation, and long for a return to how life was when they grew up. However, each generation somehow manages to figure it out.

> 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 leading to an increasingly alienated generation of kids. I grew up in suburbs and I couldn't even safely bike to my friend's house because the sidewalk would randomly end before arriving at his neighborhood, and the stroad next to it was at 45mph speed limit (thus in Texas: 60mph) and mostly filled with massive pickup trucks that probably couldn't even see me. So, my options before my parents got home were to play WoW and browse 4chan or do my homework, and if I did my homework before they got home they wouldn't believe me and would make me do some kind of schoolwork so they could see it happening, so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan.

Imo this resulted in me developing an "internet personality" aka "being a piece of shit." I was into manosphere stuff, mildly zenophobic, incredibly transphobic, and insufferably cynical. Getting to college and seeing the disgust on people's faces when I'd drop a 4chan joke was a complete culture shock to me. Took me a good 2 years to adjust to "normal society," by then I also had to overcome a reputation as an asshole.

I can't even imagine what it's like for kids like me these days now that there's full on weaponized Discords trying to convince them to shoot up schools for the lulz. At least on 4chan that kind of stuff got banned or mocked.

One reason I think this is the case is because working with children, broadly teaching, pedagogy etc. is also something that needs to be learned. Parents in the past realistically did not have the time to spend so much time with their children. We have more time now, but lack the skills (in general) to do it effectively. What I see often is kids not really having the freedom to make mistakes and figure out things on their own. In my case I realized how bad I am at teaching during covid lockdowns and home schooling. The desire to help was there, but it's difficult to grasp the level the kids can understand. One solution for me was to say, work on it on your own, and try as best as you can. Doing it wrong is allowed and if you are really confused, ask me. But with a lot of parents, they run around their kids trying to help them do everything right from the beginning. I just don't think that can work.

As children (not even teens), we were allowed to roam the farms around the village and swim in any farm-well we like entire day in the hot sun. Jump from trees into the well, chase animals, walk barefoot in the in midday of 40 deg C of summer holidays. We used to get random thorns in the feet. The kid would pluck it out by surgical poking with steel pin in his own foot.

That's what I call as rich childhood.

富不过三代 Wealth does not last three generations.

Most of America (at least west and east coast) is at this stage now. Look no further than startup culture were people have convinced themselves that repeated embarrassing failure is actually a sound investment strategy. This is the environment children are growing up in, of course they will all grow up to be embarrassing failures.

> Today, legal protections for minors are more expansive than they ever have been.

I would disagree. There now far less legal protections from dog attack. 20 years ago aggressive behaviour and attack was very clearly defined!

I refuse to allow my children to park, it is full of aggresive dogs and their shit. Animal parks are too dangerous (bcos of dogs). Support animal fraudsters invaded every "safe" niche.

They are free to molest, maul and attack children. Victim blaming and gaslighting (dog is not "reactive", just agressive). If kid gets mauled, it has to go through painful rabies shots, instead of just testing the predator!

And there is not a chance to get any compensation, since dog owner had no way to know dog could attack anyone (first bite is free).

> In 1950, there were 2.7 suicides per 100,000 15- to 19-year-olds. Today, there are 7.5 (though that’s down from a 1990s peak of 13.2).

Little typo, looking at the link it's 11.2 not 13.2. Someone knows why this peak?

“When my brother is fourteen, I’m going to get him a job here. Then, my mother says, we’ll take the baby out of the ‘Sylum for the Half Orphans.”

That is quite a quote. Hard to believe that wasn't long ago.

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_.