> But most of the children in our survey said that they aren’t allowed to be out in public at all without an adult. Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds ha

> But most of the children in our survey said that they aren’t allowed to be out in public at all without an adult. Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds have gone down a grocery-store aisle alone; more than a quarter aren’t allowed to play unsupervised even in their own front yard. This is probably a uniquely US problem because after we moved to Europe, we noticed that we see kids without their parents nearby all the time. But, this does not automatically imply that children here spend less time on their phones, we often talk with other parents about it and almost everyone thinks that their kids have too much screen time.