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Safetyism killed playtime

110 points by jseliger 3y ago

pfdietz 3y ago
I broke 3 arms while I was a kid. I was lucky I didn't break a neck. I think safetyism is just fine.
- jjgreen 3y ago
  At the same time?
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Two were.
- Fricken 3y ago
  I had it in mind I was going to be a stuntman when I was young, and took glee in scaring the crap out of adults by pretending to crash my bike, fall out of trees, or off of structures. Whatever I learned from those years of risky play I credit with helping me to go on many exciting adventures and and engage with a variety of ill-advised recreational pursuits all while keeping myself largely intact.
- xeromal 3y ago
  I think think the argument is cut and dry as one might think. What's a few broken bones if you're stunted socially, independently, and creatively through regulation and rules. Exploring the new world with friends of your own age without adults putting you in their mental box makes you your own person. I think it's underappreciated what that enables.
  - toolz 3y ago
    Completely agree, the point of life isn't to reduce risk to zero - it's to make life wildly abundant and beautiful. Joy and creativity should be prioritized heavily over safety. That doesn't mean you don't have safety as a priority, it just means joy should factor more heavily into the equation. I doubt much progress and improvement would be made simply by increasing lifespan. Comparatively, if you inspire a generation of kids to be pioneers and explorers I imagine you see a vast improvement in technological advancements and social progress. These things are hard, if not impossible, to measure, but I don't think it takes too much extrapolation from other measurable events to find this to be true.
    - dr_dshiv 3y ago
      Super nice. What books/ideas do you recommend?
      - toolz 3y ago
        I'm not sure what you're asking, recommend towards what end? I have no idea how to inspire the next generation. Right now I'm working hard towards financial independence and improving my health so that in 10 years or so I can dedicate all of my energy towards something that excites me and hopefully benefits others. I guess if I was to contribute an idea that I think more people should adopt, it's that I believe people are most happy when their existence improves others lives. To that end I think we should optimize towards having the most healthy years with the most freedom to explore ways to be useful and bring joy to others. That means being frugal and investing wisely and focusing on the delayed gratification that early retirement will bring. I find that it's hard to give from a place just surviving, but if you can delay gratification and work hard towards being in a place of surplus, you'll have a lot to offer and hopefully that leads to a very joyful and meaningful life.
    - eep_social 3y ago
      > simply by increasing lifespan To this point, there is a growing push to consider “healthspan” rather than lifespan in terms of medical outcomes. It turns out that being alive hooked up to tubes confined to a bed isn’t all that great.
  - vosper 3y ago
    Breaking a bone is a serious injury. It doesn’t always heal properly. People jokingly say that kids bounce, but sometimes they don’t. It blows my mind that people treat broken bones in kids as not a serious injury.
- jimberlage 3y ago
  Are you lucky, or are necks less likely to break than arms due to evolutionary pressure?
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Could just be survivor bias. I wouldn't be posting here if my neck had broken, most likely.
    - imp0cat 3y ago
      Also, children are suprisingly resilient and will recover quite easily most of the time.
      - doubled112 3y ago
        The bounce back game is real as a kid. Maybe it's all about mass. The force on my knees landing at 200lbs is way greater than at 50lbs. But maybe I'm just trying not to feel old.
        wharvle 3y ago
        Mass, height, and the mechanics of momentum (as when, say, tripping) all make a difference. Some of the terms involved have exponents applied. Adults definitely feel a lot more force from mistakes made while moving their bodies than kids do.
  - badpun 3y ago
    Well, arms are much longer (so, a larger lever), and people instinctually extend them to blunt the fall. Whereas it's instint to protect head and neck in the same situation.
jjgreen 3y ago
When I was a kid, 7 or 8, my Dad would give me 50p to go down to the local pub and buy him 20 cigarettes and a half-pound bar of chocolate (I was not allowed to enter the pub, but there was a take-away window near the entrance), total cost 48p. When I returned home he always said "and where's my change?"
- foobarian 3y ago
  Getting a half-pound bar of chocolate (and cigarettes!) for 48p seems like quite a deal ;)
vvern 3y ago
Safety third
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
My favorite toys, when I was a kid, were these sheet-metal rocketships and speedsters. They would have flint flywheels, and would emit a shower of sparks. Cut you to ribbons, and set things on fire -FUN. Also, I had a fully-operational steam engine that took Calcium Carbide rocks (acetylene source).
- MarcScott 3y ago
  My dad taught us how to make bows from long bamboo garden canes and gardening string, then notched small garden canes with fire-hardened points to use as arrows. We used to set up ramps on the road in our estate while it was still being built, using piles of sand and planks left behind by the builders. Then, we'd get some airtime on our BMXs. I still have a scar on my chin today from going over the handlebars. Back garden fires were a regular occurrence as well. We'd be unsupervised, playing around with flaming sticks, or throwing things into the fire, such as aerosol cans. None of this seemed to bother my parents. Then, when my own son was about eleven, I taught him how to breathe fire. It was heavily supervised by me, and we practised with water for an hour until he had the technique down, and I let him have a go with paraffin. He did it perfectly. I recorded it. I showed the video to my dad, and he was extremely angry that I had taught my son this, seemingly forgetting all the wild things he used to let us get away with when we were children. I suppose my point is that this is not really a generational thing, but a societal one. Regardless of your generation, in modern society, all adults have a heightened perception of risks, real or imagined.
  - InSteady 3y ago
    In general there seems to be a growing attitude of moral outrage towards people who tolerate a bit of risk. As though we all have a moral responsibility to preserve life and safety at basically any cost. It's insane to me. Calculated risk is the spice of life. It also allows for a sense of self-mastery as you overcome your own fear of the unknown by facing it down. People even have the nerve to criticize those who have an apatite for risk as "selfish," as though they have a moral obligation to not making other people sad or upset by their possible injury or death. Absolute madness.
vehemenz 3y ago
Safetyism is a contributing cause, but children have far fewer siblings than they used to. This means it's harder to go outside semi-supervised, and parents are more protective of their kids because there are fewer of them. Differences in reproductive strategies result in differences of parental care.
- brovid19 3y ago
  [dead]
- kredd 3y ago
  How sound is this argument? It doesn’t pass my smell test as from what I recall 25+ years ago, some of my friends didn’t have siblings. Yet we ran around up until the street lights were on. Looking at people with children in my circles right now though, they would absolutely never let their kids do that.
- miah_ 3y ago
  I'm a only child, and was a free-range/latch-key kid in the 80's. I'm thankful for my neighborhood friends, they were a excellent safety substitute for my non-existent siblings.
  - zer00eyz 3y ago
    I too am a only child, and was a free-range/latch-key kid in the 80's. We lived on a somewhat quiet dead end street. The neighbor kids were fun but we got into all sorts of nonsense... I have a very distinct memory of my parents taking me to go furniture shopping at about the age of 8 or 9. It was a fate worse than death. Do you have any idea how boring furniture is to a small child. I remember coming home, rounding a curve on our street and seeing the end of it. SO. MANY. FIRETRUCKS. I missed the roman candle fight, I missed the dry pine going up like a torch. I missed the fire department (small town they all came it was an even) and the police. Dumb luck kept me out of a lot of trouble in my youth. it. It's no wonder im not dead.
    - Clubber 3y ago
nathancahill 3y ago
Canadian Paediatric Society published this last week: https://cps.ca/en/documents/position/outdoor-risky-play https://cps.ca/en/documents/position/outdoor-risky-play
manuelabeledo 3y ago
I don't think I get the point. Creative, unstructured play and safety aren't mutually exclusive. A kid doesn't need to get a third degree burn or break an arm to "play better", and those are mostly avoidable risks. The article also missed on developing this piece of information: > In urbanised environments, where land is at an all-time premium, finding a place to run around can be a challenge. One in eight children don’t have a garden and nearly 800 playgrounds have closed in the past decade. The reason why modern playgrounds are sort of "guided" and "safe", is that the very few places they are allowed to be built, are those where "guided" and "safe" are requirements. Kids in an urban environment cannot really play football in the playground because first, there's no enough room for it, and second, the rules of these playgrounds themselves forbid it, as they are written to protect property and lower ownership risks.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  Your last paragraph is kind of the whole point - the (predictable) outcome of requiring a playground to be safe results in a lack of places for creative unstructured play, as playgrounds either prohibit it or get shut down.
- jahewson 3y ago
  Agree the article does not make a clear point. I think it conflates several issues. However, risk is now recognised as a necessary component of play: https://theeducationhub.org.nz/promoting-childrens-risky-play-in-outdoor-learning-environments/ https://theeducationhub.org.nz/promoting-childrens-risky-pla...
- rightbyte 3y ago
  > Kids in an urban environment cannot really play football in the playground because [...] I think the problem here is that bigger kids scare the target audience for a playground away. Unless you are thinking 3 year olds roaming a bit kicking a ball? But I agree on your point. Safety is not a problem, really. Anything that can be climbed is plenty unsafe enough already. There is no need to add stones underneath also. It probably comes down to parents not having time, or willing to take the time, to take their children to the playground. "Safetyism" is just a scapegoat. Todays playgrounds are way cooler and funnier than those I had ...
helen___keller 3y ago
I lived a pretty “safe” childhood, and was basically addicted to video games from 5 years old (when the Nintendo Gameboy was released), but notably I still experienced plenty of boredom and unstructured play. I had a friend 10 minute walk down the street whose parents enforced a certain number of hours outside per day. So he would call me on the phone, we would meet halfway, and then we would wander around the sidewalk and talk about video games or make pretend imaginary things. I can only imagine in todays technology landscape I would have preferred to stay home glued to YouTube on my iPad instead of seeing my friend; beating Pokémon Red for the 100th time didn’t quite have the draw by comparison
cpursley 3y ago
This is only a phenomenon in the anglo-world. Kids are still allowed to be kids in the rest of the world (where they are much more mature and physiologically healthier than American kids).
- practicemaths 3y ago
  I think that's a rather limited experiential take. Rather depends on the neighborhood where you may see kids outside playing freely or not. Regardless: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-games-limits https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-g... Wouldn't you agree China is outside of the anglo-world view? Wouldn't you agree that is limiting how kids can be kids?
acuozzo 3y ago
I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised. I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifically chose a house on a dead-end street full of retirees in order to lessen the danger of one of my children impulsively running into the street after a ball. It's nuts. I grew up in an NJ suburb in the '90s and I don't have memories of insanity like what I've seen here.
- fastneutron 3y ago
  Ditto. It’s not the breathless hysteria about child abduction or (conversely) busybody neighbors calling the cops on unaccompanied minors that keep my kids inside. It’s the insane drivers in 4 ton lifted pickups and the town’s refusal to lower the speed limit, or even post “Children Playing” signs that does it.
  - donatj 3y ago
    Lowering the speed limit isn't going to get the guy in the glass packed souped up Honda who blows through the stop sign in front of my house multiple times a day to actually slow down. That's that dudes whole deal. It's just going to give highly attentive people tickets that want to get to work at a reasonable speed like 30.
    - kspacewalk2 3y ago
      Speed limit signs are almost useless, especially if not enforced (preferably by speed cameras, preferably without announcing their location with signs). The correct solution to get that guy to stop is to make the street less deadly by design. It should be narrowed, made more winding and have visual 'clutter' added like trees, flower planters, etc. It should be intensely uncomfortable to speed more than 5-ish mph, and people who choose to do so anyway need to meet a traffic calming measure and be on the phone to their body shop well before they speed up enough to endanger a life.
danenania 3y ago
I've been volunteer teaching at my daughter's preschool every other week. Getting this balance right is tricky and it's interesting to see how teachers and other parents at the school approach it. My inclination is to be pretty laissez faire, partly because I believe in letting kids learn things on their own as much as possible even if that involves some bruises and scrapes, and partly because it's just easier to let 3 and 4 year olds do what they want. I really don't enjoy having any kind of confrontation with someone else's kid, so in the first place I try not to interfere unless it really seems necessary. If I do decide I need to stop them, I first try telling them to stop. This sometimes works, depending on the kid and situation, but often they just ignore it. At that point, I usually just give up and find an actual teacher, since they have no qualms about laying down the law when needed. The interesting part is how different people's instincts are, and how differently they approach this question. I see some parents who handle things similarly to me, but there are others who are a lot more cautious and strict and don't hesitate to get involved. The teachers advise volunteering parents to stop anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, and I think that's what is really tricky about all this. There's often not time to think things over so you have to decide in the moment based on your instincts. The teachers know that each parent will handle things differently, and they're ok with that. They would rather have a parent go with their gut and possibly overdo it than second-guess themselves, and I think that's the right approach. If I'm entrusting other adults to take care of my daughter, even if I know they're going to handle some things differently than I would, I'd prefer that they are acting decisively if something doesn't feel right to them.
- ryanobjc 3y ago
  I think this depends heavily on where you are and if you are just at a preschool or a 'coop-preschool'. We do the latter, and I was parent teacher. Not a volunteer position: our preschool dues are lower because I worked in the classroom, in a sense it's a "paid" gig. We had a very relaxed attitude towards personal harm. Getting hurt, crying, and getting better is part of the learning process. Not to say that we excessively allowed kids to get hurt, or allowed them to engage in explicitly dangerous activities, eg: throwing things, hitting kids. But I did supervise some kids who wanted to "wrestle" and "fight"... I took it upon myself to teach them to "fight clean" and when people were down we would call a break and let everyone stand up and try again. Also the prechool was mostly outside, and kids got dirty. Oh yes indeed, the mud pit was very popular! This all btw is in San Francisco.
_fat_santa 3y ago
As a future parent, this is something that really concerns me. On the one hand I want to be a good parent and protect my (future) children, but on the other hand I don't want to be over-protective. I feel like it's a pretty hard balance to strike these days.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
One of my favorite things about Texas is the fact that their playgrounds are actually dangerous with real risk. At one playground, there are these rings you crawl through to go from one part to another. The rings are attached by chains and the gaps between them are wide enough to slide through. I wish I had a picture these things were so awesome. There are other playgrounds with ropes and climbing walls with significant height on them like 12 feet. This wasn’t the case back east and in California. I love it and so do my kids. Boo boos are boo boos. They’ll be fine.
- gosub100 3y ago
  the boo boos are fine, but what about medical costs? Thats a component that I hear nobody talk about with safetyism. Can you imagine what a $15-20k bill for a broken arm (ambulance, ER, surgery, medication, follow-up visits) does to a middle or lower-class family? This a major factor to why people sue, because they can't afford these kinds of boo-boos.
  - cooper_ganglia 3y ago
    Average out-of-pocket cost for a broken bone is $2,500. Certainly not nothing, but kids don't break a bone every month or probably even every year, so it doesn't seem like too wild of a number in the long run. You can extrapolate this further. Why would I allow my 15 year old to start driving? What if she gets into a car accident, and I have to... shudder... pay her medical bills? I think the potential monetary liabilities of your children's life experiences should not be the focus, or even something considered too much. When I was in 4th grade, I knew a kid who fell off a playground, got a sharp pinecone seed behind his eye, and broke his back. He's healthy today, his back and eye are okay, and his family is doing fine financially. Breaking a bone won't destroy you physically or financially, but thinking that it will just makes the urge for safetyism stronger.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      As with so many issues in modern America, guaranteed health care could help. A vigorous social safety net would deter safetyism, an incorrect preemptive optimization.
balthasar 3y ago
"Children are far less free than they used to be. While 71% of Boomers and 80% of Gen X recall playing in the street as children, only 27% of children do today." Freedom is being allowed to get run over in the street!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  Either you're over-estimating the risk, or you think kids are playing in streets with 45+ mph limits. Quiet neighborhood roads are fine to play in.
  - InSteady 3y ago
    A fine example of how hyperbole and fearmongering is used to make a healthy parenting decisions seem irrational and irresponsible.
alephnerd 3y ago
Getting a massive "Old man yells at sky" vibe in this thread (and HN in general). Safety laws are written in blood. Whenever a new regulation is passed, it is often in reaction to some horrendous accident. A lot of the comments below are of Boomers who played with unsafe toys or took risks, but they also had some limited supervision from at least one parent. In 2023, both parents are working, so supervision is much more limited. On top of that, like another poster mentioned - cars are fairly dangerous now, and plenty of young drivers are driving pretty massive hunks of machinery that didn't necessarily exist in the 70s or 80s. Edit: Gotta love people 20-30 years older than me downvoting me to oblivion.
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  I can guarantee you I'm not 30 years older than you because I'm not even 30 years old, but I definitely think the downvotes couldn't possibly be more correct, lol. "SafEtY LAWS arE wrITtEn iN BloOd" honestly made me laugh out loud because of how incredibly predictable and rote it is, but the rest of the comment was pretty funny, too. It reads like a recipe on how to construct a maximally neurotic society. I don't think being hyper-aware of potential boo boos makes for a mentally healthy individual. Drink from the hose, play in the street, climb 80 feet up in tree, I don't care, just try not to die. I did all of this when I was a kid and more; I never broke a bone, and I never died. Sometimes I got my ass kicked or I got some some cuts, bruises, and scars, but I'm alive and I've got stories, and that's what counts. Depriving a child of that seems literally cruel to me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nottorp 3y ago
  Supervision? My parents had absolutely no idea where I played. Except that I was probably 1km away or less...
nottorp 3y ago
I'd like to commend the site for having an actual close button on the stupid 'subscribe to the newsletter' popup.
arcade79 3y ago
Rather happy that my daughter is in the Scouts here in Norway (Note: there are two scouting organizations here, religious and non-religious. My daughter belongs to the latter). Learned to use knife, axe, hammer and saw. Learned to cut wood. Learned to make fire. Camping trips. Long trips in the woods. With the local scout leaders making it very clear to all parents that yes there will be times when they come home after having cut themselves or other injuries - but there's more than enough of adults who know first aid. Camping trips where they learn canoeing, fishing, foraging, making your own food, etc. And lots and lots of unstructured play w/o active supervision.
jmull 3y ago
This is the old "things aren't the way they used to be" complaint. Always a crowd-pleaser, but also an inevitable constant and not necessarily bad. It's also really weak how it throws "safetyism" in there even though it doesn't even try to connect it to playtime. To me it feels like it's purposely conflating the inevitability of change (along with its attendant discomfort), the physical safety of children, and the invented political wedge concept of "safetyism" for the clicks. Just more dumb crap. It's also unclear how much "safetyism" is responsible for the changes in play vs some of the million other things that are different from decades ago. It comes off as a cheap shot to me, and a rather dumb one at that. E.g., adding the pejorative "ism" to added to
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I love the header image of that article! I looked like that, most days.
lgleason 3y ago
What's interesting is if you go to countries like Costa Rica, there are still more opportunities for kids to be kids. The US has created a helicopter parenting style along with many other western countries. Kids don't learn important things that playtime gives them and turn out more neurotic later on in life with much lower resilience.
magicmicah85 3y ago
My own personal experience. We made the mistake of buying a suburban town home next to a state highway with an HOA. At the time it seemed great but as our kids got older, they wanted to play outside. We’d get letters from the HOA about the kids playing in the street and how that wasn’t allowed cause of the bylaws. We ignored them and let them continue to do what they want. One time a board member tried yelling at the kids and my wife flipped out on her. Now one of my boys wants to walk outside of the neighborhood. He’s thirteen and at the age I was when I’d run around everywhere on my bike. We don’t have decent sidewalks here and traffic on the main road is 45MPh and they are legit assholes around here who don’t pay attention and are always on their phone while driving. My wife doesn’t want to let him walk to friends and I understand why. Our environments are built for cars, not for people, to travel. Too many stories of Bobby or Suzie getting hit by cars. I’m working to petition the three townships that manage our town to invest in sidewalks cause I’d love for him to be able to run around but at least with that buffer. So, I get safetyism. I don’t want to lose my children. I also don’t want them to experience life through an ipad so anything they want to do, we’ll go do it. We actually did do a walk down the road a few weeks back, trying to show them how to hug the road or go into the grass to stay away from cars. Once they’re in town, the sidewalks are nice but being right on the edge, we get left out.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Just an FYI, but most municipalities have "sidewalks" legally defined as right of ways. They are available to use even if they are unimproved (grass). So that could be something to look into. Most of my childhood was in areas without paved sidewalks. The grosser part is that you live in an HOA that can make (and enforce) those sorts of rules.
  - magicmicah85 3y ago
    That’s good to know, I did think that if I’m walking under the powerlines along the road, I’m probably within an easement. And believe me, I wish we could move, but we are currently priced out of anything else in our town. Our kids are at an age where they do not want to switch schools but as soon as they are all graduated, we will be looking.
Zobat 3y ago
Have to recommend the book "50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)" by Gever Tulley. I think he still runs a camp where they promise the kids will come home with band aids.
tjeio 3y ago
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eitally 3y ago
A lot of this has to do with parents' choices. Specifically, choices in where to live and how to raise their kids. It's still plenty possible to enable free, and free-ish playtime in the US, but teaching kids to respect risk has to begin young. I live in a top 10 city -- San Jose -- with crazy commute traffic up and down the peninsula. But we chose to raise our kids on a two block long street with a church at one end and a park at the other. We get very little through traffic and they play outside largely unsupervised. As they get older, they bike to school independently, to their neighborhood schools (.75mi elementary, 1.2mi middle/high). When they're K-3rd, I bike with them to teach them safety rules. The older ones in middle & high school are on their own, commuting back & forth including staying after school for sports practices and events. We did buy them phones in 6th grade for our benefit, but I generally feel like by age 10 they're able to make pretty reasonable decisions on their own about most things, and know when to ask if they're unsure. It's critical, imho, for parents to focus on things like this in the early years because by the time kids are in middle & high school they're going to naturally start becoming more independent and must be able to assess situations and make smart decisions (or make stupid decisions and learn from them). Too much restriction on play and independence ultimately results in incomplete development, which can have cascading effects as adolescents transition into adulthood.
- Atheros 3y ago
  There are people in this very thread who bought houses in obviously crappy neighborhoods complaining about their crappy neighborhoods. There are some neighborhoods where walking down the street comes with an especially notable risk of getting robbed. That's a bad neighborhood. Everyone agrees. There are other neighborhoods where playing in a park comes with an especially notable risk of Karen calling the police, who respond. That's a bad neighborhood too.
- squigz 3y ago
  It might not be as simple as "choosing" to live in a nice neighbourhood.
carabiner 3y ago
I submitted a story about a slide for kids: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442577. And the only comment was about how it would lead to lawsuits. This is a slide, something kids have used for 100+ years.
cptnapalm 3y ago
Once upon a time, a friend of mine and I, when we were 12 or so, road an inflatable pool boat down a canal all day seeking this trash dump where all the porn magazines were dumped that another friend of mine had shown me once. That was a lot of fun.
feliciegerald 3y ago
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kderbyma 3y ago
it wasn't just safetyism.....it was city planners ....density with no parks and greenspace....terrible design to favour numbers over happiness.....that was far more damaging....

110 points by jseliger 3y ago

pfdietz 3y ago

I broke 3 arms while I was a kid. I was lucky I didn't break a neck. I think safetyism is just fine.

jjgreen 3y ago
At the same time?
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Two were.
Fricken 3y ago
I had it in mind I was going to be a stuntman when I was young, and took glee in scaring the crap out of adults by pretending to crash my bike, fall out of trees, or off of structures. Whatever I learned from those years of risky play I credit with helping me to go on many exciting adventures and and engage with a variety of ill-advised recreational pursuits all while keeping myself largely intact.
xeromal 3y ago
I think think the argument is cut and dry as one might think. What's a few broken bones if you're stunted socially, independently, and creatively through regulation and rules. Exploring the new world with friends of your own age without adults putting you in their mental box makes you your own person. I think it's underappreciated what that enables.
- toolz 3y ago
  Completely agree, the point of life isn't to reduce risk to zero - it's to make life wildly abundant and beautiful. Joy and creativity should be prioritized heavily over safety. That doesn't mean you don't have safety as a priority, it just means joy should factor more heavily into the equation. I doubt much progress and improvement would be made simply by increasing lifespan. Comparatively, if you inspire a generation of kids to be pioneers and explorers I imagine you see a vast improvement in technological advancements and social progress. These things are hard, if not impossible, to measure, but I don't think it takes too much extrapolation from other measurable events to find this to be true.
  - dr_dshiv 3y ago
    Super nice. What books/ideas do you recommend?
    - toolz 3y ago
      I'm not sure what you're asking, recommend towards what end? I have no idea how to inspire the next generation. Right now I'm working hard towards financial independence and improving my health so that in 10 years or so I can dedicate all of my energy towards something that excites me and hopefully benefits others. I guess if I was to contribute an idea that I think more people should adopt, it's that I believe people are most happy when their existence improves others lives. To that end I think we should optimize towards having the most healthy years with the most freedom to explore ways to be useful and bring joy to others. That means being frugal and investing wisely and focusing on the delayed gratification that early retirement will bring. I find that it's hard to give from a place just surviving, but if you can delay gratification and work hard towards being in a place of surplus, you'll have a lot to offer and hopefully that leads to a very joyful and meaningful life.
  - eep_social 3y ago
    > simply by increasing lifespan To this point, there is a growing push to consider “healthspan” rather than lifespan in terms of medical outcomes. It turns out that being alive hooked up to tubes confined to a bed isn’t all that great.
- vosper 3y ago
  Breaking a bone is a serious injury. It doesn’t always heal properly. People jokingly say that kids bounce, but sometimes they don’t. It blows my mind that people treat broken bones in kids as not a serious injury.
jimberlage 3y ago
Are you lucky, or are necks less likely to break than arms due to evolutionary pressure?
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Could just be survivor bias. I wouldn't be posting here if my neck had broken, most likely.
  - imp0cat 3y ago
    Also, children are suprisingly resilient and will recover quite easily most of the time.
    - doubled112 3y ago
      The bounce back game is real as a kid. Maybe it's all about mass. The force on my knees landing at 200lbs is way greater than at 50lbs. But maybe I'm just trying not to feel old.
      - wharvle 3y ago
        Mass, height, and the mechanics of momentum (as when, say, tripping) all make a difference. Some of the terms involved have exponents applied. Adults definitely feel a lot more force from mistakes made while moving their bodies than kids do.
- badpun 3y ago
  Well, arms are much longer (so, a larger lever), and people instinctually extend them to blunt the fall. Whereas it's instint to protect head and neck in the same situation.

jjgreen 3y ago

When I was a kid, 7 or 8, my Dad would give me 50p to go down to the local pub and buy him 20 cigarettes and a half-pound bar of chocolate (I was not allowed to enter the pub, but there was a take-away window near the entrance), total cost 48p. When I returned home he always said "and where's my change?"

foobarian 3y ago
Getting a half-pound bar of chocolate (and cigarettes!) for 48p seems like quite a deal ;)

vvern 3y ago

Safety third

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

My favorite toys, when I was a kid, were these sheet-metal rocketships and speedsters. They would have flint flywheels, and would emit a shower of sparks. Cut you to ribbons, and set things on fire -FUN. Also, I had a fully-operational steam engine that took Calcium Carbide rocks (acetylene source).

MarcScott 3y ago
My dad taught us how to make bows from long bamboo garden canes and gardening string, then notched small garden canes with fire-hardened points to use as arrows. We used to set up ramps on the road in our estate while it was still being built, using piles of sand and planks left behind by the builders. Then, we'd get some airtime on our BMXs. I still have a scar on my chin today from going over the handlebars. Back garden fires were a regular occurrence as well. We'd be unsupervised, playing around with flaming sticks, or throwing things into the fire, such as aerosol cans. None of this seemed to bother my parents. Then, when my own son was about eleven, I taught him how to breathe fire. It was heavily supervised by me, and we practised with water for an hour until he had the technique down, and I let him have a go with paraffin. He did it perfectly. I recorded it. I showed the video to my dad, and he was extremely angry that I had taught my son this, seemingly forgetting all the wild things he used to let us get away with when we were children. I suppose my point is that this is not really a generational thing, but a societal one. Regardless of your generation, in modern society, all adults have a heightened perception of risks, real or imagined.
- InSteady 3y ago
  In general there seems to be a growing attitude of moral outrage towards people who tolerate a bit of risk. As though we all have a moral responsibility to preserve life and safety at basically any cost. It's insane to me. Calculated risk is the spice of life. It also allows for a sense of self-mastery as you overcome your own fear of the unknown by facing it down. People even have the nerve to criticize those who have an apatite for risk as "selfish," as though they have a moral obligation to not making other people sad or upset by their possible injury or death. Absolute madness.

vehemenz 3y ago

Safetyism is a contributing cause, but children have far fewer siblings than they used to. This means it's harder to go outside semi-supervised, and parents are more protective of their kids because there are fewer of them. Differences in reproductive strategies result in differences of parental care.

brovid19 3y ago
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kredd 3y ago
How sound is this argument? It doesn’t pass my smell test as from what I recall 25+ years ago, some of my friends didn’t have siblings. Yet we ran around up until the street lights were on. Looking at people with children in my circles right now though, they would absolutely never let their kids do that.
miah_ 3y ago
I'm a only child, and was a free-range/latch-key kid in the 80's. I'm thankful for my neighborhood friends, they were a excellent safety substitute for my non-existent siblings.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  I too am a only child, and was a free-range/latch-key kid in the 80's. We lived on a somewhat quiet dead end street. The neighbor kids were fun but we got into all sorts of nonsense... I have a very distinct memory of my parents taking me to go furniture shopping at about the age of 8 or 9. It was a fate worse than death. Do you have any idea how boring furniture is to a small child. I remember coming home, rounding a curve on our street and seeing the end of it. SO. MANY. FIRETRUCKS. I missed the roman candle fight, I missed the dry pine going up like a torch. I missed the fire department (small town they all came it was an even) and the police. Dumb luck kept me out of a lot of trouble in my youth. it. It's no wonder im not dead.
  - Clubber 3y ago

nathancahill 3y ago

Canadian Paediatric Society published this last week: https://cps.ca/en/documents/position/outdoor-risky-play https://cps.ca/en/documents/position/outdoor-risky-play

manuelabeledo 3y ago

I don't think I get the point. Creative, unstructured play and safety aren't mutually exclusive. A kid doesn't need to get a third degree burn or break an arm to "play better", and those are mostly avoidable risks. The article also missed on developing this piece of information: > In urbanised environments, where land is at an all-time premium, finding a place to run around can be a challenge. One in eight children don’t have a garden and nearly 800 playgrounds have closed in the past decade. The reason why modern playgrounds are sort of "guided" and "safe", is that the very few places they are allowed to be built, are those where "guided" and "safe" are requirements. Kids in an urban environment cannot really play football in the playground because first, there's no enough room for it, and second, the rules of these playgrounds themselves forbid it, as they are written to protect property and lower ownership risks.

PeterisP 3y ago
Your last paragraph is kind of the whole point - the (predictable) outcome of requiring a playground to be safe results in a lack of places for creative unstructured play, as playgrounds either prohibit it or get shut down.
jahewson 3y ago
Agree the article does not make a clear point. I think it conflates several issues. However, risk is now recognised as a necessary component of play: https://theeducationhub.org.nz/promoting-childrens-risky-play-in-outdoor-learning-environments/ https://theeducationhub.org.nz/promoting-childrens-risky-pla...
rightbyte 3y ago
> Kids in an urban environment cannot really play football in the playground because [...] I think the problem here is that bigger kids scare the target audience for a playground away. Unless you are thinking 3 year olds roaming a bit kicking a ball? But I agree on your point. Safety is not a problem, really. Anything that can be climbed is plenty unsafe enough already. There is no need to add stones underneath also. It probably comes down to parents not having time, or willing to take the time, to take their children to the playground. "Safetyism" is just a scapegoat. Todays playgrounds are way cooler and funnier than those I had ...

helen___keller 3y ago

I lived a pretty “safe” childhood, and was basically addicted to video games from 5 years old (when the Nintendo Gameboy was released), but notably I still experienced plenty of boredom and unstructured play. I had a friend 10 minute walk down the street whose parents enforced a certain number of hours outside per day. So he would call me on the phone, we would meet halfway, and then we would wander around the sidewalk and talk about video games or make pretend imaginary things. I can only imagine in todays technology landscape I would have preferred to stay home glued to YouTube on my iPad instead of seeing my friend; beating Pokémon Red for the 100th time didn’t quite have the draw by comparison

cpursley 3y ago

This is only a phenomenon in the anglo-world. Kids are still allowed to be kids in the rest of the world (where they are much more mature and physiologically healthier than American kids).

practicemaths 3y ago
I think that's a rather limited experiential take. Rather depends on the neighborhood where you may see kids outside playing freely or not. Regardless: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-games-limits https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032489883/china-kids-video-g... Wouldn't you agree China is outside of the anglo-world view? Wouldn't you agree that is limiting how kids can be kids?

acuozzo 3y ago

I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised. I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifically chose a house on a dead-end street full of retirees in order to lessen the danger of one of my children impulsively running into the street after a ball. It's nuts. I grew up in an NJ suburb in the '90s and I don't have memories of insanity like what I've seen here.

fastneutron 3y ago
Ditto. It’s not the breathless hysteria about child abduction or (conversely) busybody neighbors calling the cops on unaccompanied minors that keep my kids inside. It’s the insane drivers in 4 ton lifted pickups and the town’s refusal to lower the speed limit, or even post “Children Playing” signs that does it.
- donatj 3y ago
  Lowering the speed limit isn't going to get the guy in the glass packed souped up Honda who blows through the stop sign in front of my house multiple times a day to actually slow down. That's that dudes whole deal. It's just going to give highly attentive people tickets that want to get to work at a reasonable speed like 30.
  - kspacewalk2 3y ago
    Speed limit signs are almost useless, especially if not enforced (preferably by speed cameras, preferably without announcing their location with signs). The correct solution to get that guy to stop is to make the street less deadly by design. It should be narrowed, made more winding and have visual 'clutter' added like trees, flower planters, etc. It should be intensely uncomfortable to speed more than 5-ish mph, and people who choose to do so anyway need to meet a traffic calming measure and be on the phone to their body shop well before they speed up enough to endanger a life.

danenania 3y ago

I've been volunteer teaching at my daughter's preschool every other week. Getting this balance right is tricky and it's interesting to see how teachers and other parents at the school approach it. My inclination is to be pretty laissez faire, partly because I believe in letting kids learn things on their own as much as possible even if that involves some bruises and scrapes, and partly because it's just easier to let 3 and 4 year olds do what they want. I really don't enjoy having any kind of confrontation with someone else's kid, so in the first place I try not to interfere unless it really seems necessary. If I do decide I need to stop them, I first try telling them to stop. This sometimes works, depending on the kid and situation, but often they just ignore it. At that point, I usually just give up and find an actual teacher, since they have no qualms about laying down the law when needed. The interesting part is how different people's instincts are, and how differently they approach this question. I see some parents who handle things similarly to me, but there are others who are a lot more cautious and strict and don't hesitate to get involved. The teachers advise volunteering parents to stop anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, and I think that's what is really tricky about all this. There's often not time to think things over so you have to decide in the moment based on your instincts. The teachers know that each parent will handle things differently, and they're ok with that. They would rather have a parent go with their gut and possibly overdo it than second-guess themselves, and I think that's the right approach. If I'm entrusting other adults to take care of my daughter, even if I know they're going to handle some things differently than I would, I'd prefer that they are acting decisively if something doesn't feel right to them.

ryanobjc 3y ago
I think this depends heavily on where you are and if you are just at a preschool or a 'coop-preschool'. We do the latter, and I was parent teacher. Not a volunteer position: our preschool dues are lower because I worked in the classroom, in a sense it's a "paid" gig. We had a very relaxed attitude towards personal harm. Getting hurt, crying, and getting better is part of the learning process. Not to say that we excessively allowed kids to get hurt, or allowed them to engage in explicitly dangerous activities, eg: throwing things, hitting kids. But I did supervise some kids who wanted to "wrestle" and "fight"... I took it upon myself to teach them to "fight clean" and when people were down we would call a break and let everyone stand up and try again. Also the prechool was mostly outside, and kids got dirty. Oh yes indeed, the mud pit was very popular! This all btw is in San Francisco.

_fat_santa 3y ago

As a future parent, this is something that really concerns me. On the one hand I want to be a good parent and protect my (future) children, but on the other hand I don't want to be over-protective. I feel like it's a pretty hard balance to strike these days.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

One of my favorite things about Texas is the fact that their playgrounds are actually dangerous with real risk. At one playground, there are these rings you crawl through to go from one part to another. The rings are attached by chains and the gaps between them are wide enough to slide through. I wish I had a picture these things were so awesome. There are other playgrounds with ropes and climbing walls with significant height on them like 12 feet. This wasn’t the case back east and in California. I love it and so do my kids. Boo boos are boo boos. They’ll be fine.

gosub100 3y ago
the boo boos are fine, but what about medical costs? Thats a component that I hear nobody talk about with safetyism. Can you imagine what a $15-20k bill for a broken arm (ambulance, ER, surgery, medication, follow-up visits) does to a middle or lower-class family? This a major factor to why people sue, because they can't afford these kinds of boo-boos.
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  Average out-of-pocket cost for a broken bone is $2,500. Certainly not nothing, but kids don't break a bone every month or probably even every year, so it doesn't seem like too wild of a number in the long run. You can extrapolate this further. Why would I allow my 15 year old to start driving? What if she gets into a car accident, and I have to... shudder... pay her medical bills? I think the potential monetary liabilities of your children's life experiences should not be the focus, or even something considered too much. When I was in 4th grade, I knew a kid who fell off a playground, got a sharp pinecone seed behind his eye, and broke his back. He's healthy today, his back and eye are okay, and his family is doing fine financially. Breaking a bone won't destroy you physically or financially, but thinking that it will just makes the urge for safetyism stronger.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    As with so many issues in modern America, guaranteed health care could help. A vigorous social safety net would deter safetyism, an incorrect preemptive optimization.

balthasar 3y ago

"Children are far less free than they used to be. While 71% of Boomers and 80% of Gen X recall playing in the street as children, only 27% of children do today." Freedom is being allowed to get run over in the street!

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Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
Either you're over-estimating the risk, or you think kids are playing in streets with 45+ mph limits. Quiet neighborhood roads are fine to play in.
- InSteady 3y ago
  A fine example of how hyperbole and fearmongering is used to make a healthy parenting decisions seem irrational and irresponsible.

alephnerd 3y ago

Getting a massive "Old man yells at sky" vibe in this thread (and HN in general). Safety laws are written in blood. Whenever a new regulation is passed, it is often in reaction to some horrendous accident. A lot of the comments below are of Boomers who played with unsafe toys or took risks, but they also had some limited supervision from at least one parent. In 2023, both parents are working, so supervision is much more limited. On top of that, like another poster mentioned - cars are fairly dangerous now, and plenty of young drivers are driving pretty massive hunks of machinery that didn't necessarily exist in the 70s or 80s. Edit: Gotta love people 20-30 years older than me downvoting me to oblivion.

cooper_ganglia 3y ago
I can guarantee you I'm not 30 years older than you because I'm not even 30 years old, but I definitely think the downvotes couldn't possibly be more correct, lol. "SafEtY LAWS arE wrITtEn iN BloOd" honestly made me laugh out loud because of how incredibly predictable and rote it is, but the rest of the comment was pretty funny, too. It reads like a recipe on how to construct a maximally neurotic society. I don't think being hyper-aware of potential boo boos makes for a mentally healthy individual. Drink from the hose, play in the street, climb 80 feet up in tree, I don't care, just try not to die. I did all of this when I was a kid and more; I never broke a bone, and I never died. Sometimes I got my ass kicked or I got some some cuts, bruises, and scars, but I'm alive and I've got stories, and that's what counts. Depriving a child of that seems literally cruel to me.
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nottorp 3y ago
Supervision? My parents had absolutely no idea where I played. Except that I was probably 1km away or less...

nottorp 3y ago

I'd like to commend the site for having an actual close button on the stupid 'subscribe to the newsletter' popup.

arcade79 3y ago

Rather happy that my daughter is in the Scouts here in Norway (Note: there are two scouting organizations here, religious and non-religious. My daughter belongs to the latter). Learned to use knife, axe, hammer and saw. Learned to cut wood. Learned to make fire. Camping trips. Long trips in the woods. With the local scout leaders making it very clear to all parents that yes there will be times when they come home after having cut themselves or other injuries - but there's more than enough of adults who know first aid. Camping trips where they learn canoeing, fishing, foraging, making your own food, etc. And lots and lots of unstructured play w/o active supervision.

jmull 3y ago

This is the old "things aren't the way they used to be" complaint. Always a crowd-pleaser, but also an inevitable constant and not necessarily bad. It's also really weak how it throws "safetyism" in there even though it doesn't even try to connect it to playtime. To me it feels like it's purposely conflating the inevitability of change (along with its attendant discomfort), the physical safety of children, and the invented political wedge concept of "safetyism" for the clicks. Just more dumb crap. It's also unclear how much "safetyism" is responsible for the changes in play vs some of the million other things that are different from decades ago. It comes off as a cheap shot to me, and a rather dumb one at that. E.g., adding the pejorative "ism" to added to

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I love the header image of that article! I looked like that, most days.

lgleason 3y ago

What's interesting is if you go to countries like Costa Rica, there are still more opportunities for kids to be kids. The US has created a helicopter parenting style along with many other western countries. Kids don't learn important things that playtime gives them and turn out more neurotic later on in life with much lower resilience.

magicmicah85 3y ago

My own personal experience. We made the mistake of buying a suburban town home next to a state highway with an HOA. At the time it seemed great but as our kids got older, they wanted to play outside. We’d get letters from the HOA about the kids playing in the street and how that wasn’t allowed cause of the bylaws. We ignored them and let them continue to do what they want. One time a board member tried yelling at the kids and my wife flipped out on her. Now one of my boys wants to walk outside of the neighborhood. He’s thirteen and at the age I was when I’d run around everywhere on my bike. We don’t have decent sidewalks here and traffic on the main road is 45MPh and they are legit assholes around here who don’t pay attention and are always on their phone while driving. My wife doesn’t want to let him walk to friends and I understand why. Our environments are built for cars, not for people, to travel. Too many stories of Bobby or Suzie getting hit by cars. I’m working to petition the three townships that manage our town to invest in sidewalks cause I’d love for him to be able to run around but at least with that buffer. So, I get safetyism. I don’t want to lose my children. I also don’t want them to experience life through an ipad so anything they want to do, we’ll go do it. We actually did do a walk down the road a few weeks back, trying to show them how to hug the road or go into the grass to stay away from cars. Once they’re in town, the sidewalks are nice but being right on the edge, we get left out.

giantg2 3y ago
Just an FYI, but most municipalities have "sidewalks" legally defined as right of ways. They are available to use even if they are unimproved (grass). So that could be something to look into. Most of my childhood was in areas without paved sidewalks. The grosser part is that you live in an HOA that can make (and enforce) those sorts of rules.
- magicmicah85 3y ago
  That’s good to know, I did think that if I’m walking under the powerlines along the road, I’m probably within an easement. And believe me, I wish we could move, but we are currently priced out of anything else in our town. Our kids are at an age where they do not want to switch schools but as soon as they are all graduated, we will be looking.

Zobat 3y ago

Have to recommend the book "50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)" by Gever Tulley. I think he still runs a camp where they promise the kids will come home with band aids.

tjeio 3y ago

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eitally 3y ago

A lot of this has to do with parents' choices. Specifically, choices in where to live and how to raise their kids. It's still plenty possible to enable free, and free-ish playtime in the US, but teaching kids to respect risk has to begin young. I live in a top 10 city -- San Jose -- with crazy commute traffic up and down the peninsula. But we chose to raise our kids on a two block long street with a church at one end and a park at the other. We get very little through traffic and they play outside largely unsupervised. As they get older, they bike to school independently, to their neighborhood schools (.75mi elementary, 1.2mi middle/high). When they're K-3rd, I bike with them to teach them safety rules. The older ones in middle & high school are on their own, commuting back & forth including staying after school for sports practices and events. We did buy them phones in 6th grade for our benefit, but I generally feel like by age 10 they're able to make pretty reasonable decisions on their own about most things, and know when to ask if they're unsure. It's critical, imho, for parents to focus on things like this in the early years because by the time kids are in middle & high school they're going to naturally start becoming more independent and must be able to assess situations and make smart decisions (or make stupid decisions and learn from them). Too much restriction on play and independence ultimately results in incomplete development, which can have cascading effects as adolescents transition into adulthood.

Atheros 3y ago
There are people in this very thread who bought houses in obviously crappy neighborhoods complaining about their crappy neighborhoods. There are some neighborhoods where walking down the street comes with an especially notable risk of getting robbed. That's a bad neighborhood. Everyone agrees. There are other neighborhoods where playing in a park comes with an especially notable risk of Karen calling the police, who respond. That's a bad neighborhood too.
squigz 3y ago
It might not be as simple as "choosing" to live in a nice neighbourhood.

carabiner 3y ago

I submitted a story about a slide for kids: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442577. And the only comment was about how it would lead to lawsuits. This is a slide, something kids have used for 100+ years.

cptnapalm 3y ago

Once upon a time, a friend of mine and I, when we were 12 or so, road an inflatable pool boat down a canal all day seeking this trash dump where all the porn magazines were dumped that another friend of mine had shown me once. That was a lot of fun.

feliciegerald 3y ago

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kderbyma 3y ago

it wasn't just safetyism.....it was city planners ....density with no parks and greenspace....terrible design to favour numbers over happiness.....that was far more damaging....