alt Hacker NewsWhere do the children play?
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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
I think this heavily depends on location. At 7 my child can check nearly all the boxes for independent activities. My wife may not like it, but the surroundings are probably safer than anywhere else in the world. The only thing we don’t have is forests.
This is central Tokyo.
Kids still spend a lot of time on Roblox because everyone tends to be deathly afraid of letting them ring each other’s doorbells.
a bit off but it sometimes feels like a self-reinforcing loop in Western societies: We have fewer children because we optimize so hard for money, stability, and personal security. But because we have fewer children, each child becomes “economically and emotionally precious.” And the more precious they become, the more afraid we are to let them take risks, explore freely, or just do their own thing.
The end result is kids who grow up with less independence, less trust in the world around them, and fewer peers out on the streets to learn from. In a way, our desire for security creates the insecurity we’re trying to avoid — and the cycle keeps feeding itself.
What an eye-opening article. I fully agree with the fact that the kids become more and more constrained and having a hard time seeking their freedom and independence.
But perhaps not so everywhere in the world... We are in the middle of Europe and specifically moved to a smaller town outside the big city when our kids were born. We live in a kid-rich neighborhood with only quiet side-streets/walkways and amble play opportunities in a 300 m radius around the house. Our kids roamed the neighborhood playgrounds already at a young age with large groups of their friends. And when primary school started (age 6-7), we were told, that it is recommended for the kids to walk without adults to school after the first two months of settling in. Also, being in boyscouts is an amazing experience for the kids. Our little one participated in a first camp at age 6 for a whole week. I am pretty confident they have/had their "forests" to roam. The older one now games a lot on the computer with a group of friends. The younger one is almost permanently in video calls with friends when not outside the house. Reading about private digital spaces with peer groups makes a lot of sense now...
I admit that our situation is pretty ideal. And it cannot be generalized, not even for our country or even our region. But we did actively seek an environment, where our kids could grow up this way and were incredible lucky to find one.
> 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
At least in the US, my guess for the cause of this is goes something like:
1. Housing is expensive.
2. People move to where housing is cheap (ie plenty of land, easy to build). In the last few decades that's more often than not been in the south.
3. Big population changes in those areas demand more schools.
4. Big school is built on the edge of town, because that's where the land is and one school has better economies of scale than multiple neighborhood schools
5. No one lives close to the school anymore, so everyone has to drive.
Throw in the sprawl that often accompanies new development in areas with wide open land and its easy to see how we end up here.
I live in Brookline, MA (in the North, next to Boston) and it's very much a walk-to-school town. The structural reason for that is our schools are in the neighborhoods, have been around for a long time, and there's nowhere "on the edge of town" to build a new one. Our town has financial pressures like everyone else and I few government's are able to resist the temptation of cost savings---we just don't have the option to build that way. Thank goodness.
I'm trying to raise confident, independent kids. It is exceptionally more difficult to allow them to play outside on their own, walk to the grocery store, etc, for mainly two reasons:
1. There are no other kids outside. We live in a neighbourhood with many young families, at all age ranges (littles to teen). We rarely see kids outside, and if we do, it's mainly kids walking with their parents somewhere (eg to the local grocery store)
This is a walkable neighbourhood 5km from city centre of a city of 500,000. The same applies to other neighbourhoods even closer to the city, those known as "family friendly". I do runs through these neighbourhoods and they are ghost towns.
When my kid has friends over, they can run to the park up the street (600m) and play together. I'm not worried, as they are together. Sometimes other kids will show up and join them. I think it's a sign that kids are inside, not sure what to do: they crave play with others their age.
2. Large, speeding vehicles.
We live in an area where we can walk to a few smaller grocers and restaurants, which is fantastic. My kids only need to cross a local retail strip to get to most of these. The crossing is two car lengths, and I feel pretty good about this. There are bike lanes which act as a buffer to the sidewalk as well and vehicles can't travel fast.
Now if my kid wants to go to their friends house? They have to cross two arterials. These are four lane roads with fast moving traffic, uncontrolled signals, lots of road rage, fast cuts on corners, etc.
My kids are gaining confidence and the skills in navigating these tough roads, but I struggle with the transition to full independence for this particular area. That one mistake can end it all.
My kids are 9 and 5, for reference. The five year old is still attached to me, but the oldest is beginning to crave more independence.
> Why do our children spend more time in Fortnite than forests? Usually, we blame the change on tech companies. They make their platforms as addicting as possible, and the youth simply can’t resist — once a toddler locks eyes with an iPad, game over.
> I want to suggest an alternative: digital space is the only place left where children can grow up without us
I still think it's the addiction of digital media. I have tried to get my kids to play outside, to visit their friends, etc. They refuse, because they're addicted to the screen. In fact, friends with stricter limits on screen use are more likely to come here looking for my son to play. Outside, or, if they can, on a screen here.
I'm fairly sure the kids from the article can also be made addicted to digital media if you start them young. Let's not, and let's give our kids stricter limits.
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.
Weirdly enough, the thing this most reminded me of is https://phrack.org/issues/7/3
If you look past the cringey, r/im14andthisisdeep edge, Its essentially saying the same thing. A desire for peer communities not available in the physical world.
If children were to spend time in digital spaces they should be disconnected from adults (especially the adults who try to prime, turning them into next generation of consumers).
I think offline spaces should be just fine.
I think that something else changed and should be added to the analysis: the number of children. There are less of them so there are less chances to reach a critical mass that lets kids play together every day. When I was little it was common to have between 10 to 30 of us within the fence of our city building. Parents and grandparents were looking at us from the windows but they were probably hearing us scream and play, a sign that all was good, and we were left alone to do what we liked to do. Where do you find 10 kids together now, if not at a school or in another organized context (organized by adults) ?
Scary statistics from the US. Here's some anecdotal data from Norway (my daughter being the data, she's 11):
- Walked in a different aisle at a store. My daughter started going to the store alone from she was about 7.
- Talked with neighbours without parent. Uhm. That's just weird. I'm assume she was around 4? That's when we moved here..
- Made plans with friends, yeah, from she was around 5/6 or thereabouts.
- Walked/biked w/o parent: From 6/7, to/from school, and to friends.
- Built a structure outside: She's been part of building various structures in scouts.
- Sharp knife: Since she was about 6 or 7.
And now I realize I need to wag my hands a bit back and forth with all the 6-7 stuff.
Anyhow; one of the best things we did was ensuring she joined the scouts. Creates incredibly independent kids. I've seen threads on reddit where people are wondering if it's OK to leave the 9 year old at home alone for 30 minutes, and I'm wondering what kind of lunacy that is. My daughter has been capable of walking / biking home from school since she was 6 or 7, and proceed to make her own afternoon snack before we arrive home from work. She's been baking since she was 8. Making toasts, omelets and whatnot since the same age. Scouts taught her how to use a gas burner outside when she was about 8 or 9.
I mean; come on.
While I understand the general sentiment I think grouping kids in a cohort from 8 till 12 is a very wide cohort.
The statistics presented have very different implications whether the kid is 12 or 8, I think.
That said, as a Dutch parent we tend to let our children grow up relatively unsupervised. At least many foreign parents are a bit startled at first.
This article helps me understand them better.
When I let my kids have freedom in the various stores we go into, I get nearly instant looks of disgust from people. It's like everybody has forgotten what it's like to be a kid and why that kind of independence is necessary. Socially it's verboten.
Are there any studies on people who grew up with similar isolated childhoods in the 20th century (as in modern-day levels, even comparing with the late 20th declining average)? It would be interesting to see the similarities/differences between them and modern cohorts, and if surrounding culture made adult integration harder or easier (though I'm rather pessimistic on that). Any HNer willing to share a personal anecdote on this?
In the US cars jockey for space with guns to claim the title of leading cause of dead kids.
But we often forget that cars kill kids at an astonishing rate -even though kids stopped playing outside-. In that light, the bloodbath that is American suburbia becomes much more clear. When pedestrian deaths go up even as miles walked (in aggregate) goes down, the situation is even more dire than it seems.
My kids play outside. But we moved to the Netherlands so they could. And even here, large SUVs and even -bafflingly- giant American Dodge Rams are becoming distressingly common.
The article only discusses the west and hunter gatherer societies. Most of the world is neither. That is a big omission because it avoids the comparison with other developed and urbanised societies.
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 risk and seek comfort. There is no need to take risk, develop, fight for survival or grow up with friction.
As an ex-child. The best years I remember are with a small group of kids who would wander all over the suburb playing at different parks, or whatever crazy idea someone came up with, finding bee hives, climbing trees or exploring past the boundary of what we always stayed inside of. They were only a few years, but a major highlight.
(Australian suburbs ~2004)
Well, I think it's fine, building jumbo planes Or taking a ride on a cosmic train Switch on summer from a slot machine Yes, get what you want to if you want 'Cause you can get anything
I know we've come a long way We're changing day to day But tell me, where do the children play?
Well, you roll on roads over fresh green grass For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas And you make them long, and you make them tough But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off
Oh, I know we've come a long way We're changing day to day But tell me, where do the children play?
While the point is valid. I believe the experience described is mostly American not "western".
And I find the anti-modernity sentiment embedded in the fascination with hunter-gatherer cultures obnoxious.
Is the author aware that child mortality in hunter-gather cultures is like 50%?
Not that its correlated with childhood independence, we used to have plenty of independence when I grew up in the 90s and the mortality rate was about the same as it is now. But the point is kids need independence, not woods nor machetes. You can be independent in the park, in the streets, the undeveloped lots, the empty parking lots, your friends basement, and their yard when their parents are away.
>They noticed that the children liked to roam through bomb sites, where they would build fires and play hide-and-seek.
This reminded me of one of my all-time favorites, the Animatrix. There is a story in this anthology, Beyond, that centers around this exact concept. I still get goosebumps just from reading its Wikipedia entry.
As a society we find violence or harm against children to be extremely shocking and tragic. As a society we would do almost anything to prevent it.
Giving children the kinds of freedoms discussed in this article would lead to some harm coming to them. Accidents, violence, kidnap, etc.
Therefore, society won't give them those freedoms.
This tendency has been exagerated by mass media in the modern era. Every single case, every piece of anecdata, makes massive headlines and instills the fear into parents everywhere.
It's impossible for society to reverse course because that would mean acknowledging, implicitly or explicitly, that some level of harm for some children is justified by the developmental benefits to all children of increased freedom.
> digital space is the only place left where children can grow up without us
What an observation. I agree with this.
The traditional US thing is to charge parents with negligence for letting their kids walk to the store if someone else kills them while they cross the road https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/parents-are-charged-son-...
I live in San Francisco, about a block from when a speeding driver killed a little girl by driving around the outside of a car that was waiting for a family to cross the road. The family had the light, yes. The killer will attend a driver’s safety course and do some community service.
In general, in this city there are people who call themselves “natives” who promote the idea that children should live highly constrained lives. Others, who call themselves “progressive activists” have fought for the rights of pedophiles to be released early. Unsurprisingly, often such pedophile immediately assault people days within release.
Because of the asymmetry in outcome, those with children slowly cede ground to those without by simply leaving. This feedback loop accelerates until little enclaves start forming. Inside SF this is the Mission Bay / Mission Rock area where today I saw a gaggle of unaccompanied 10-12 year olds. This isn’t a common sight elsewhere in the city where the “natives” and “progressive activists” have sway.
For our part, we have a plan to buy some undeveloped land where we can reliably camp. The current constraints are that maintenance of this in fire-prone California isn’t straightforward. There are minimum standards for defensible space and so on that regulate newer purchases that often require a great deal of time and effort to meet. I’ll find a way, however.
Pretty insightful article, it resonates with what I remember of my experience as a kid.
But while I believe the general trends outlined here, it's important to remember that "the world" != "the West" != "the US", and even within a single country, the situation can be vastly different from one place to another, one socio-economic stratum to another, or even one family to another.
I also think kids escaping to digital places is not a very recent phenomenon, and has been happening for at least a generation. It's just that the platforms have changed. Back in my days, that place was Facebook, and we had entire digital lives there that our parents knew little about. And it's no coincidence that we started migrating elsewhere at the time when the adults started joining as well (though the general enshitification of the platform certainly didn't help either).
> There’s no point in whining about the impulses endowed to them by several hundred thousand years of evolution. Don’t hate the player; hate the game. And if you really hate the game, make a better one.
I have contact with kids from 3 different places, 2 with high independent mobility and 1 with low independent mobility, and as much I like to agree that kids needs to be free, there's an important parental argument that needs to be talked about that is risk vs reward function if the kids get hurt.
In places with high mobility (at least 2 of them in the chart) there's some state support in terms of children's sick leave if something happens, plus work protections if you need to be absent for more than 6 weeks, and the education system has mechanisms to not let this kid be left behind (for example, if a kid breaks his/her legs).
In those places with low independence, I talk with some parents, and all of them are scared of the possibility of something permanent happens or something that can demand continuous support during working time; in those cases I can see why they play safe.
In the other hand, another second-order effect is that in those places with low independency, one thing that I noticed is that the motor coordination takes way more time to develop, and it cascades down for instance during sports activities (of the lack of), physical development and so on.
One thing not mentioned is the effect of Covid and lockdowns.
On the one hand, my youngest was just getting into gaming with friends when the first lockdown started. I will be forever grateful that he did as his social life hardly seemed to suffer and he just carried on playing online, shouting and yelling with them just as much as if he was outside at a playground.
My teenage daughters had a much harder time of it though, as neither were into gaming and lost a lot of treasured contact with friends. Both suffered poor exam results as a result and have struggled to stay in touch with friends since.
The other aspect is those babies and toddlers who grew up in lockdown with no peer interaction at all. AIUI, they are still having a terrible time adjusting to school and normal social interaction.
I highly recommend Peter Gray's writing: https://petergray.substack.com/
Relevant to the discussion about online spaces and autonomy in childhood, I'd jump into this discussion about teen suicide rates: https://petergray.substack.com/p/d3-why-did-teen-suicides-es...
We have robbed our children of autonomy and freedom and then wonder why anxiety and depression are rampant.
Americans think they are free. In reality they are free to do a very limited subset of basic necessity and socialization tasks. You can drive your tank to the the local shopping center, maybe a shooting range. And you wonder why people freak out when you try to take away their guns and trucks.
You are free to travel to some business that has taken care of all the legal requirements for you. Some freedom. You aren't even free to connect some fiber to "your" house you only have the freedom to choose which product to buy and maybe if you are one of the lucky few which product to sell (not fiber though that's a state funded monopoly)
There's been a destruction of the commons in general, and no place where people are allowed to loiter outdoors without falling under suspicion or actually being arrested. Children are also people. When I was a child, I hung out in the streets all day.
The trapping of children was just the prelude. Adults are also trapped at home, especially when they don't have any money to spend. Even if they do have money, there are no places they can go where they are expected to interact with strangers. The number of adult virgins has gotten absurdly high.
We have a tool that we could use to fight that: adult education. We have state colleges that we could be trying to attract adults to, rather than acting like people are done learning at 22. Chicago had/had a network of "Field Houses" that are community centers associated with parks where you could teach a class, or have a local group meeting, etc.
Instead, people are isolated and atomized into perfect little consumers who can't share things and can't organize politically except through an online petition encouraged by a "social network."
Yeah well, we have one kid, and we're too old to have another. He's the only grandchild on both sides of the family. He has no cousins, first or second. That's apparently the new normal in many countries.
Of course he's going to live a sheltered life!
It's easy to tell parents to let their kids roam free, but that advice is to copy the behaviour of parents that had ten kids.
I said "had", because on average, two of them will survive to adulthood and procreation. That's natural. That's the way things were for our species for megayears.
Does that make it sad that it's not like that any more?
Maybe. Maybe not.
If you want to change it, recognise that first, society and our very civilization would need to change back to the era of every family having half a dozen or more kids. Then, then you'd have to figure out what to do about the excess population: unsustainable exponential growth or mass child deaths. You choose!
I don’t say this for downvotes, but much of the west is no longer white. Diversity creates low trust society, and the changes in children playing are downstream of that.
I grew up in a nearly all white suburban neighborhood. I ran around with a gaggle of kids and we had pretty much free rein. When I was about 12, my father took me to a nearly all black theme park and I was sexually assaulted the only time in my life. When low income housing was built in our neighborhood, I soon learned I had to lock my car door at night after it was broken into. I’d gone years before that without locking my door.
I’ve since started a family in the whitest area I could find (lower income, but it’s still one of the safest areas in our state) and we don’t lock our doors. I want to give my kids the childhood I had, and this seems like the best way to do it.
I don’t say this to garner downvotes. I know it’s a taboo topic, but it’s also my lived experience and I believe is an important aspect of this issue.
Umm, do most of those kids have distended bellies?
> 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 should stick with "kids in the USA" when he means that.
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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 elsewhere we'd need to drive them everywhere, they'd be stuck at home way more, they'd have no real agency in their lives - I grew up like that and hated it.