9 ms·

The quiet disappearance of the free-range childhood

259 points by sylvainkalache 6mo ago

lmf4lol 6mo ago
this resonates a lot. I am not sure how to handle this though. Next to our house (500m), the city government established a camp for “asylum seekers”. 100 men. Men only. How can I reasonable let my pre-teen daughters roam freely now? Id love to, but my gut feeling doesnt allow me to. Maybe, back in the days, it was just a different time? A more high trust society that worked well? Nowadays, we have news stories, where 70 year olds get stabbed by youngsters because they got lectures on their bad behaviour. When I was young, I had respect towards a 70 year old. Big time. Never would we have thought to pull out a knife… Life changed a lot in recent years and not for the better on all dimensions. Europe is still pretty save though. At least if you trust the statistics
- techjamie 6mo ago
  Statistically, we live in the safest society we ever have. We see a lot of bad stuff happening because news reporting travels further and faster than ever before, amplifying the perception the world is going to shit. Plus, now, basically every kid is running around with a phone that gives them access to talk to the police or their parents at any time. So it's going to be a lot riskier for someone to try anything against them. Even then, between 80-90% of sexual assaults are performed by people the victims already know, and around 30% of those are relatives of the victim.
  - shrubble 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - realo 6mo ago
      Wow. Are you for real? I thought this kind of bigotry was only used by far right shit to manipulate feeble-minded people. I'll be generous and assume this comment was not made by a human, but by a bot.
      - phyzix5761 6mo ago
        People hold beliefs based on information they've received from sources they perceive as trustworthy. Maybe the sources they're basing their beliefs on are not so trust worthy or maybe they have a different perspective on events. I'm inclined to say its an issue of trustworthiness because the source is likely news and media and those are created for the sole purpose of pushing specific agendas and narratives.
      - ryandrake 6mo ago
        This place has gotten wild in the last few years. Open stormfront-esque comments without any shame whatsoever. It is absolutely nuts the extent to which bigotry has gotten totally normalized.
      - shrubble 6mo ago
        I'll be generous and assume you don't read British news and are unaware of the existence of Rotherham. There was just a big debate in Parliament over an inquiry into the subjects raised.
- dghlsakjg 6mo ago
  Do you have any evidence or are you just basing your fears on feelings? Has there been a rise in sex attacks associated with this particular refugee housing? You should flip through some newspaper archives from when you were a kid. I don’t know where you are, but I can almost certainly guarantee that there were kids attacking people back then too. Just because you and most you know would never have pulled a knife, doesn’t mean that there weren’t those that would. After all, you say the teens today attack old people with knives, but I really don’t think your teen daughters are stabbing people with knives. How can you reasonably let your teen daughters out alone? Well, be reasonable. Find out if your fears are amped up by sensationalist press. Go meet your refugee neighbours. Quite honestly it sounds like YOU spend too much time inside. Edit: I just saw your comment about importing men from countries where rape is natural. I can’t imagine that we have the same definition of reasonable.
- baublet 6mo ago
  This is bigotry dressed up as concern. It’s also not something widespread. Seems like you just think immigrants are rapists.
  - anothereng 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  - hackinthebochs 6mo ago
    It's interesting how much some of you expect us to ignore gut feelings and statistics to avoid the appearance of bigotry. We should at the very least be able to acknowledge statistical reality then we can debate what is an appropriate response. Hell, I don't even need to know the backgrounds of the immigrants. We know that males engage in almost all the violent/forcible sexual assaults. We know that a lack of community engagement increases the chance for anti-social behavior. We know that access is a prerequisite for interpersonal crime. That itself is enough to warrant heightened concern.
roxolotl 6mo ago
I’m reasonably convinced this explains basically everything currently attributed to social media, for children at least, and likely can also help explain some concern around birth rates and child rearing costs. Starting with the satanic panic the US has slowly closed down children’s lives because of concern that terrible things will happen to children if not continually under supervision. And the true is that yes sometimes bad things happen and have always happened. But if you look to many other countries they do not have the same extreme expectations of parents or the state to keep children’s lives locked down.
- trallnag 6mo ago
  Does the term "satanic panic" also apply to the EU restricting internet access for the youth?
  - dghlsakjg 6mo ago
    Satanic panic was a very specific phenomenon in the US.
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    No, that's plain old security state motivation hidden behind plain old moral panic justifications nobody buys.
spicyusername 6mo ago
I don't know. Maybe this is going away in some places, maybe I just have my own anecdata, but my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood. I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of small Metro. Nothing special about it at all. Every time I see one of these articles I always wonder who they're talking about. I always feel like this is just one of those news headlines that won't go away, but isn't quite tethered to reality, but people really like to feel bad about modern life and so we keep talking about it as if it's real. I suspect the real reason kids aren't playing outside, if there is one, is not because they can't, it's because they choose not to. Just as adults are no longer choosing to go to third spaces. Screens came for everyone.
- rayiner 6mo ago
  This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live. I dropped my daughter off at the mall to hang out with their friends and one of the moms followed them around the whole time. They're all 13!
  - garbawarb 6mo ago
    Do journalists live in bougie places? It's not a particularly well-paying job.
    - rayiner 6mo ago
      It's a job that requires strong credentials and is gated by unpaid internships. So it disproportionately attracts people from relatively affluent backgrounds: https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/the-costs-of-becoming-a-journalist/ https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/the-cos.... And those folks live near and, more importantly, travel in social circles with affluent people. It's also not particularly expensive to live in a bougie place. I grew up in Mclean, VA. My dad ran into Dick Cheney at the CVS once. But you can get an apartment in Mclean on a journalist's salary, especially if your parents paid for college and you have no debt. You can’t afford to raise a family there, but you can live there, near your social circle. Conversely, you'll see lots of trades people, cops, etc., living in places that aren't bougie at all, despite making more money than the lower end of the professional class. People find ways to congregate around others in their social class, income notwithstanding.
theturtle 6mo ago
[dead]
xtiansimon 6mo ago
My free range childhood friends and I would have been all _get bent_ to that lady—even at 6 yro. I can tell you this because I was also getting a whooping at home from da for saying the same to my ma. I was a dreadful child.
jl6 6mo ago
It’s easier to let kids play around the neighborhood when you know who the neighbors are.
- amazingamazing 6mo ago
  most acts of abuse to family members are by other family members. ironically strangers are more likely to leave your kid alone than extended family.
  - phyzix5761 6mo ago
    That's a problem of access not familiarity.
- paulryanrogers 6mo ago
  Know which of your neighbors have unsecured firearms lying around. Sadly all to common where I am.
homeonthemtn 6mo ago
I think this is more a data point towards the quiet disappearnce of community / the steady march towards pervasive isolation
- Loughla 6mo ago
  Correct. There are no communities anymore, just groups of houses. You see it in the death of social and civic organizations, churches, and other community groups. Everybody is an island. I don't know what has caused this, but it seems like it's happening in most 1st world countries. Anyone have insights about this?
  - lencastre 6mo ago
    and yet everybody is one discoord channel away from everybody else hundreds if not thousands of km away, eager to talk, voice their opinions etc… crossing the street, meet your neighbor, too much hassle
  - GoldenRacer 6mo ago
    There's a book called "Bowling Alone" that explores a lot of ideas around this. Iirc the conclusion is two fold: 1. Historically women were largely responsible for community building. As they joined the workforce, they had less time to community build and so there became less community. 2. Technology allowing home entertainment. People can now stream movies instead of going to theaters. Play computer games instead of go to arcades. Check Facebook instead of call friends to catch up. Use a Keurig for convenient coffee instead of go to a cafe.
  - esafak 6mo ago
    I think it depends on the locale. I moved from SF, which is career oriented, to OH, which is family oriented and, as I expected, I found more kids roaming the streets. So if your streets are deserted, ask the locals their views on parenting. Paranoid parents will talk up the safety factor, but it's overblown.
  - keybored 6mo ago
    Bourgeoisie society. Not values, not culture, not mindset. It’s rooted in how society is structured. But values, culture, and mindset reinforce it. This very individualistic society can only critique itself in terms of individual failings. Which leads to the catch-22, anti-communal, ankle-deep critiques: people are on their phones, people are asocial, why don’t “people” all get a clue individually and fix this via some spontaneous autoenlightenment.
metalman 6mo ago
here in Canada, social service "baby snatchers" have destroyed basic community cohesion and along with many other wildly out of control beurocratic policing forces, such as the spca making having animals a huge liability, litteral special subdivisions, chicken police, horse police, and an enacted rock police to prevent the totaly illegal practice of picking rocks off a beach, but hey it is legal to pack granma into the back of a motor home and drive her to the government canabis store, get her wrecked, and then take her in so she can ask to be euthanized. cant make this shit up as they say.
- dghlsakjg 6mo ago
  Wow! Where I live my neighbors have chickens and one has a horse and they never get hassled, the kids roam through the neighborhood under the age of ten without getting picked up by the authorities (well, one time one got lost and a helpful cop brought him home, but that was the end of it), if your dog wanders off animal control will call you to come pick it up (first time they waive the fee), you can collect shells, rocks, driftwood and seaweed for fertilizer off the beach. We have euthanasia but it is a carefully controlled process that involves multiple independent doctors and a lucid patient, and the supermajority (84%) of people approve of it! Canada sounds like a terrible place, but you are more than welcome in the country I call home; Canada. Oh wait…
scelerat 6mo ago
My biggest fear of letting my young kid play alone outside is getting hit by a car.
- neogodless 6mo ago
  When I was a kid I was taught not to walk in the street. When you walk, you go in the opposite direction of cars and can see them coming and, if necessary, move off to the side more. I know it's survivorship bias, but it worked for me. Now I get that population density is increasing, and probably so is traffic. Though so are automatic safety features that cause cars to brake rather than hit things. Are there statistics on vehicular fatalities in suburbs?
  - tomasphan 6mo ago
    Pedestrian traffic deaths are going down again after peaking in 2022. Accidents are less survivable in the US due to bigger cars and higher hoods. Quote from CDC During 2013–2022, U.S. traffic-related death rates increased a relative 50.0% for pedestrians and 22.5% overall, compared with those in 27 other high-income countries, where they declined a median of 24.7% and 19.4%, respectively. Across countries, U.S. pedestrian death rates were highest overall and among persons aged 15–24 and 25–64 years.
  - bojan 6mo ago
    The cars are getting bigger. That means that the impact is more deadly, and the line of sight is higher - making it easy to overlook a child. The sensors often won't react at low speeds which are common for residential neighborhoods, and at high speeds they are late anyway.
    - coldtea 6mo ago
      >The cars are getting bigger Wasn't there a trend in the US away from pompous SUVs and towards smaller cars, people even starting to re-evaluate some European-favored "city" cars more? Also aren't cars also getting ligther, with less heavy / metallic exterior over time?
ocdtrekkie 6mo ago
I remember when I was a kid I would bike to a park around a half mile away by myself, definitely before I was 13, and I admit it feels weird to suggest a kid can go to the park down just a single block alone today. The funny thing is it'd be safer: Kids have cell phones now by like 7 or 8 in a lot of cases and can call for help! Back when I was that age if I got injured or something I might've had to knock on strangers' doors!
gehsty 6mo ago
As a parent you feel the push and pull of not ignoring your child while also not mollycoddling them. For me let the kid do what they want - if your kid wants to stay home let them, if they want to climb trees and go off on their bike let them. Help them learn what is safe (which rods can they cross), what are their boundaries. Hopefully they get it, maybe they don’t. Don’t restrict access to devices or screens too harshly. Encourage games of any kind. Wear sunscreen.
kannanvijayan 6mo ago
I have a 10 year old boy and I'm facing these issues right now. I'm also in Canada so culturally adjacent to the US and similar enough with regards to this topic. I don't see child welfare agencies personally as a particular threat when it comes to this topic. Maybe they ARE more likely to get involved in cases of more free range parenting where before they weren't, but it doesn't register as a real worry. The major difference I see between when I was growing up and now is that when I went out onto the streets, there were other kids on the streets. My parents didn't know exactly what they were sending me out to, but they knew that there as a general crowd of kids that would be out on the street until some point in the evening, and that they would all go home at around the same time, and that's also when you were expected home. The draw of smartphones and video games as indoor entertainment can't be understated, but I can exercise some parental tyranny here and always kick him out of the house to go play like my folks used to do. But there are no other kids out there. I'm sending him out into streets empty of kids. To mitigate this I'm trying to nudge things in the direction of him and his friends forming some sort of after-school crew that finds outside activities to do together, undirected. There are other like minded parents that I've found that are also interested in enabling something like this. On the subject of risks - I strongly believe that the role of parenthood is to mediate a child's exposure to the real trauma of a hostile, often absurd reality that they will grow up into. Controlled exposure to risk, to self-directed decision making in times where they feel like someone won't be there to help them out and they need to figure things out on their own, these are critical requirements in parenting IMHO. And all risk comes with some small chance of tragedy, and that's a burden we as parents have to bear: to expose ourselves to the emotional trauma of the possibility of our children getting hurt, however small the chance, so that they are able to grow into healthy well-adjusted adults. I feel like I have to work a lot harder than my parents did to enable that exposure.
- testing22321 6mo ago
  Small town Canada here. In winter all the kids above school toboggan and slide down the roads (GT racers). All the kids below trudge up carrying their slider of choice. In the afternoon the roles are reversed. Not an adult in sight. At the ski hill kids 5+ roam free- it’s always fun getting on the chairlift and a little kid says “ can you help me get on?” And you have to physically pick them up onto the moving (fixed grip) chairlift. There’s no cell service. Mountain bike trails around town are full of groups of kids 5+. My advice: move to a small town, it’s like going back in time in a very good way.
givemeethekeys 6mo ago
Blame a litigious culture where agencies have far too much power to "fix" other people. People in many places in America live with a fear of losing their children or getting sued and losing everything.
eweise 6mo ago
When my child was an infant, my wife parked in a parking lot and starting chatting with a friend about 10 yards away. Minutes later a woman came by and starting claiming the child was not safe and was going to call protective services. This freaked both of us out that a stranger could potentially have the power to cause the government to become involved with our family. Fortunately, we didn't let that experience prevent us from letting our kids wander freely. But it does just take one over-concerned parent, to get you into trouble.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- mothballed 6mo ago
  I had something like that happen I was out of town and forgot most places in America have a way more fascist child snatchers than where I live. The police contacted a national database check, their local child services, and my hometown child services. Thankfully my hometown child services told them to go fuck themselves (the place I live in now thankfully doesn't usually get involved unless there is serious abuse) and the ones in the place I was at didn't have time to deal with it before I left, but they certainly would have if I were a resident there.
  - ceayo 6mo ago
    > fascist child snatchers lol
- vjvjvjvjghv 6mo ago
  A friend of mine was outside with his kids. He read a book and a woman who drove by yelled at him to always watch the kids and not read a book.
sublinear 6mo ago
I do get that it's stressful to raise a family. You're being held accountable for many things you don't have much control over, but I don't think this is a big deal either way. This is a false dichotomy like all the other nonsense aimed at parents. It misses the point entirely to seek control over whether your kids are "free range" enough. That style of parenting worked so well in the past (it didn't really, but I digress) because they left well enough alone. They weren't trying to contrive anything. Your kids absorb everything from you. Don't let your insecurities be part of it. What I would argue is much more important is keeping things fresh with new opportunities. That's your main job as a parent. Keep them thinking and engaged with their mostly self-directed path in life. The goal is to open their eyes and help them understand the world. Respect their intelligence and let them decide things on their own. Many of those so called free range childhoods of the past were actually just empty and boring. That's when they got into trouble. That's not something to be nostalgic about. When I hear about trends like this I have to wonder if some parents are just looking for excuses to be lazy.
seb1204 6mo ago
I have to keep telling my kids that "this is not the USA", all the things they see or hear are so dominated by USA views and experiences that the kids need to be reminded that this should not be transferred to where we live without consideration. This is a constant effort to review concerns and angst that might arise. E.g. school shootings and metal detectors on school entrances. Sure there are socioeconomic issues around when looking at high schools here but not like that. Personally I think we need to ground ourselves and not get shit crazy or paralysed by fear.
polivier 6mo ago
I do feel like we as a society are moving in the direction discussed by the article, as a general trend. But this is not my personal experience. We live in typical suburbs, and we are lucky enough that our street has a bunch of like-minded young families that let their kids play outside. Our street really feels like what you would imagine if you were thinking of a typical street in the 1960s. Kids aged 5 to around 10 playing ball in the street, going in each other's yards/houses, etc. There's a Catholic church less than 1km away, and at 6pm every day the bells ring. All the kids go back to their houses for supper when they hear the bells. It's great. There's a kid (7-8 years old I think) a few houses down that carries a walkie-talkie with him during the summer. He'll be out for several hours (probably not farther than 10 houses away from his own house), and his mom checks on him every now and then using the walkie-talkie. I'll buy a set for own kids this summer for the exact same purpose. The only thing I'm kind of scared of are the cars, because they tend to drive too fast (for my taste) and kids tend to not always look when they cross the street when they're too excited playing their games. Edit: I just remembered that a few years ago, the cops showed up because there was a complaint about our kids being left unsupervised. They were playing in the backyard, which is completely fenced off, while we were inside cooking supper. Our kitchen window faces the yard so we could see them, and the window was open so we could hear them. At least the cops realized that the complaint was BS and didn't even come inside to check for anything. We live in Canada.
skrrtww 6mo ago
> “We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.” It's disgusting that this has become a casual attitude and admission by the tech worker class. No one should be getting this free pass. "I am actively harming children and society with my livelihood (except my own, because I am so smart). Here I am proudly and smugly stating this in a news article."
- pickledish 6mo ago
  Don't know why you were downvoted -- I scoffed at that part too. The least we in tech can do is have some self-awareness
- tmseidman 6mo ago
  I disagree- I think it's not much different than working at a distillery or cigar company (wrappery?). Social media is a vice not very different than whiskey or cigars- they're addictive, feel good in the short term, and are problematic to have too much or to do habitually. But we still let people indulge in them because they're fine in small quantities for responsible adults, and we expect that parents will not let their kids have access to them. The only differences as far as I can see are in buying- a child could technically buy a phone for themself if they had the money and create an account on Instagram for free, and in cultural recognition of social media as a vice, which I believe is starting to change. The overall point is, the law should assume that adults are reasonably intelligent and responsible people, and that parents should be the ones responsible for parenting their own children their own way.
  - projektfu 6mo ago
    Don't get high on your own supply. Famous advice.
  - keybored 6mo ago
    > But we still let people indulge in them because We want to make money. > The overall point is, the law should assume that adults are reasonably intelligent and responsible people, Over cigarettes and alcohol. The most inconsequential stuff. But don’t say the words “direct democracy”.[1] Then people being reasonably intelligent and responsible gets forgotten. By the hive mind at least. But people should be assumed to be reasonably intelligent and responsible. If that narrative allows us to make money off them. Not when it comes to democracy and political autonomy, of course. Shudders. Where’s the option for people who are weak willed when it comes to something? Can they ban themselves from buying these goods? If not, where are the heroes that are working on that? > and that parents should be the ones responsible for parenting their own children their own way. There are whole studies of psychology weaponized against children to make them act as consumer proxies for their parents. To optimize nagging. But every pair of parent for themselves. Against all of marketing. “Responsibility.” Because that makes money. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=b65e8bee43c2ed0 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=b65e8bee43c2ed0
beej71 6mo ago
I recently revisited my childhood town and walked from my childhood home to my school. I hadn't done that for nearly 50 years. It was shorter than I remember, of course, but it was still several blocks. The last time I walked it, I was five. I also learned to ride a bicycle when I was five, so that took the place of walking for the latter part of the kindergarten school year. I arrived at the school just as it was getting out for the day. I did not see a single student of any age leave without an adult. Like so many people of my generation, I can only wonder at the cost, and be grateful that I was born when I was.
chairmansteve 6mo ago
Yeah. Not seeing it. The local neighbourhood here in Arizona is infested with 12 year olds on e-bikes. It's great.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  It work on the dirt-bike tier e-bikes because they can get away. IF they are walking my child has been harassed by Karens asking "why they are out on their own." I look forward to the day they are old enough to ride a fast enough e-bike to escape people with cell phones that will rat them out for being out and about. I largely blame cell phones for the Karens being able to impose their will. When I was a kid we were all out about and/or doing dumb shit, but anyone who wanted to call the authorities had to go home to find a telephone. By that time we were long gone. As long as we didn't go near houses, no one could touch us. Now they will just follow the kid with their cellphone until the rat-fuckers from CPS or the police arrive.
  - garbawarb 6mo ago
    We tell children not to talk to strangers but if a random adult goes up to a child and says something like "Why are you out on your own," what are they supposed to do? Thankfully this never happened to me as a child, I don't even know what I'd do.
    - 3eb7988a1663 6mo ago
      "Nothing at all until you groped me, Karen. Don't make me call the cops on you, pedo"
DaedalusII 6mo ago
america is more dangerous than many 3rd world and developing countries on the street once my friend get arrested in LA by police when he jogging. they say they arrest him for his own safety because he shouldnt be out jogging in "this neighborhood" turns out people in america get murdered and attacked in the street all the time for... no reason. yes literally, no motive.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  Me and my child were detained by the police in a park because my child is a different race and some Karen called it in as suspicious and I was detained as a "kidnapper." I ended up buying acreage in the country just to escape all the pieces of shit that would harass me and my child for playing outside. The danger to children is largely the police and CPS, who rip apart families for hallucinations or levels of parenting sin that are far more benign than the emotional cost to children of authorities bearing down on them.
  - DaedalusII 6mo ago
    you are a real american now, you play outside in your private land that you drive to. there is peace in the universe again now, if your child is too playful for Ms. Karen, they will give them a shit load of adderal as well you may consider paying for a private school to avoid Karens drugging your children
- coldtea 6mo ago
  Also so conditioned to this warzone levels of violence, that many consider them normal, or will cite stats with 5x-10x the violence of an equivalent sized city in the rest of the West and East saying "that's good odds, just X of 100K murdered last year".
- Barrin92 6mo ago
  >america is more dangerous than many 3rd world it isn't. Crime is highly concentrated and the vast majority of, at least median affluent America, is about as safe as it gets. Same goes for any big cities, usually you can count risky streets on one hand, where 90% of the violence happens. Not to mention, developing countries are if anything the only places where kids still run around and play on the street. I've spend a fair amount of time in Latin American countries with much higher violent crime rates than most of the world and you don't see much helicopter parenting if anything in the first world this style of parenting is a result of excess safety, not lack of it. The world has seen a secular decline in violent crime over the last few decades, and yet this paranoia is distinctly new.
Grappelli 6mo ago
[flagged]
- pandaman 6mo ago
  How are abduction rates extremely low? Where did you get the rates? I could only find FBI NCIC reports, which do not differentiate the reason, but it shows 300K+ missing children in 2025. That's quite a lot. It does not say what fraction of those are abductions, but I doubt it makes a big difference for the parents looking for the missing child if the reason for the child missing is an abduction or something else. Also, AMBER alerts go off so often that everyone I know turns off alerts on their phones. Still see them on highway displays all the time.
  - SapporoChris 6mo ago
    Certainly the differences matter. If the vast majority of the abductions are 'Parental child abduction' and very few children are abducted by strangers. "On average, fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year since 2010, the FBI says. From 2010 through 2017, the most recent data available, the number has ranged from a low of 303 in 2016 to a high of 384 in 2011 with no clear directional trend." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-missinggirl-data/kidnapped-children-make-headlines-but-abduction-is-rare-in-u-s-idUSKCN1P52BJ/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-missinggirl-dat... I would say that abduction by stranger rates are very low.
    - pandaman 6mo ago
      It's bizarre, I have people responding with outdated or anachronistic statistics again on HN. Is this because LLMs get trained to a certain date? 2017 was almost 10 years ago. Also, for some reason "abducted by strangers" is not the only alternative to "parental abductions", this document, for example [1], differentiate "non-family" and "strangers" for whatever reason. And "non-family" abductions were ~60K in 1999! Pay for a better LLM, don't use the free stuff for your botting. 1. https://childfindofamerica.org/resources/facts-and-stats-missing-children/?utm_source=copilot.com https://childfindofamerica.org/resources/facts-and-stats-mis...
zkmon 6mo ago
It's not isolated phenomenon.If we look at the larger scale of, say, 100 years, a lot of things are rapidly disappearing. It's actually some sort of extinction that is underway, but you don't feel it on a smaller scale of time. Similar to how Romans wouldn't have been aware of the Fall of Roman empire while it was happening, because it was too slow to notice.
- ceayo 6mo ago
  Can you give some examples of things rapidly disappearing?
  - FloorEgg 6mo ago
    The average person's ability to acquire food from nature (farm, hunt, gather) and cook it for themselves. The average person ability to make and fix their own tools. Build and fix their shelter. Free range childhood. Average person getting dirt under their fingernails. Being in sync with sunlight cycle. Stargazing at night. These are off the top of my head (I'm not op).
    - rao-v 6mo ago
      I don’t think in 1926 more than 50% of global 15-20 year olds could: “acquire food from nature (farm, hunt, gather) and cook it for themselves.” Or “make and fix their own tools. Build and fix their shelter.” (Culturally, those tasks often specialize by vocation, gender etc.)
      - kube-system 6mo ago
        They absolutely could. A quarter of Americans’ primary job was agriculture in the 1920s. While job specialization was certainly a thing that didn’t mean people outsourced all of these tasks the way people do today.
        rao-v 6mo ago
        That’s different from solo gather and cook and repair which is the artificially inflated bar being set here. I know people from multiple parts of the world who grew up on family working farms - specializing very real (esp. gender based)
neuroelectron 6mo ago
>What changed? In a 2023 article for Psychology Today, Gray proposed some factors that began reshaping parents’ attitudes and children’s behavior around the middle of the century: “the arrival of television, the rise of adult-directed kids’ sports, the gradual exclusion of kids from public spaces, the declining opportunities for gainful employment or meaningful contributions to the family economy, and, finally, the increased mandate that kids must be constantly monitored and protected.” You will see lots of kids free-ranging in Lakewood, NJ. A lot of families there have banned TV from the home.
- semiquaver 6mo ago
  That paragraph bothered me. It gives a strong “assuming the conclusion” vibe. Oh, a factor reshaping parents attitudes is a “mandate that kids must be constantly monitored and protected” (in other words, parents’ attitudes)? You don’t say.
  - ls612 6mo ago
    No, the mandate is enforced by the government coming and taking away your children by force, for some indeterminate period of time, until your lawyer goes in front of a judge and (hopefully) the judge rules that the government is stupid and should give you your kids back. But by then the damage is done. One has to think if a state wanted to eliminate individualism in society this application of surveillance and restraint to children would be entirely by design...
- hawaiianbrah 6mo ago
  Lakewood is a fascinating place, to be sure!
- projektfu 6mo ago
  The takeover of US kids soccer by club soccer is disturbing to me. Generally kids who play are either well off or extremely talented (called "scholarship"?). I think the clubs suck the fun out of it. Even with the expense, American players perform much worse than players in other countries where the kids have just been playing for fun for years until they start getting paid.
deleted 6mo ago
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KnuthIsGod 6mo ago
On the other hand, stuff happens. Depends on your risk appetite and your systems tolerance for the inevitable consequences of errors... A 5 year old free range kid on a scooter died outside a nearby school a few months ago. Hit by a SUV Was riding back from primary school on a scooter, without the mother. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-14/islah-metcalfe-rouse-hill-public-school-two-more-students-struck/106007398 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-14/islah-metcalfe-rouse-... A massive investigation, police, social services, traffic consultants, a million plus spent on upgrading safety, mother and father demonised in the community,etc ... Teachers involved who responded or gave CPR ( I know some of them) given counselling. The mother is likely to have lost custody of her other children.
- namero999 6mo ago
  As a counter example, I witnessed 3 months ago a similar scene in my neighborhood, where a kid on a bike, crossing on pedestrian stripes, was hit by a taxi. It was a bad accident but luckily he didn't die. His dad was following right behind him. I'm leaning to think that "shit happens" in any case, but overprotection adds on top another layer of subtle, long term risks.
- projektfu 6mo ago
  There was no support in the link for your assertion that the mother is likely to lose custody. Money was raised in support of the parents. Your link says two other children were struck at the same intersection before this, and the municipality didn't take notice. Yet you blame the parents for not driving to school instead of the driver of the truck, and the traffic situation? This is really the problem.
ww520 6mo ago
Gen X was the last free range children. They ran wild after school without the tethering cell phones, playing in sand and drinking from garden hoses. The silent generation turned out to be a great generation building most of modern technologies.
semiquaver 6mo ago
Judging by this comment thread, this is just not something HN is capable of having a reasonable discussion on.
QuarterReptile 6mo ago
I think Maryland deserves a special shoutout. It's illegal, and not just in a CPS-steamrolls-your-rights-and-family sort of way, for an 8 year old to be left with children <13. Growing up, I think many girls had ended their babysitting careers by 13.
croisillon 6mo ago
Related: 2017 (but based on a 2007 DailyMail article), 520 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13547089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13547089
jhoechtl 6mo ago
A delicate topic with many perspectives. Our small families make it possible to devote so much energy to our kids. However autonomy is all so important to become a strong adult later. We deliberately need let go more than we do now.
alexpotato 6mo ago
As a relatively "free range" child in my youth and now the parent of children, even I find it hard to reconcile how I feel differently that my parents. e.g. at 10 years old, my cousins and I were running around in the woods at my gradparents' home in rural Pennsylvania. I was the oldest of the group with my youngest cousin probably being 6. No cell phones. No Apple watches etc. We were outside of that house around 9am and would come back for lunch and then dinner when my grandmother rang the bell. My oldest has an Apple watch and is both reachable able trackable yet the above still feels little strange to me.
insane_dreamer 6mo ago
Social media, and instant news media (scary news sells), amplify the perception of danger, where the numbers don't back it up. > Stranger kidnappings are exceptionally rare. They occur roughly 100 times per year, which works out to a 1-in-720,000 annual risk of a child being kidnapped — less likely than being struck by lightning at some point in their life. > A Pew Research Center survey from 2022 found that about 60% of U.S. parents were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about their children being kidnapped,
insane_dreamer 6mo ago
In the late 70s early 80s I went to school in another town from ages 11-13 and would take a train + bus to get there. Was perfectly normal. This was in France though, not US. I let my 13 year old go out by himself, walk to places, take the street car; he has a phone so he can contact us if he needs help, and we can see where he is if we're concerned. It's ironic that parents are more worried today when technology makes it much _easier_ to track/communicate with your child (back in the day at that age, when I was out of the house my parents had no way of reaching me).
firesteelrain 6mo ago
This has to be a limited area where this idea of “free range” is a problem. Where I live is middle to upper middle class and there are kids everywhere. Electric motorized bicycles have made them even more mobile.
ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
In my childhood, my Mom said "we were the first Democrats in the neighborhood" as part of a new wave of young families. But we were also next door to the gayest neighborhood in San Diego (Hillcrest) and so our neighbors were mostly childless, and our Catholic parish had no school attached, for obvious reasons. So, we were sort of carpetbaggers from the beginning. We were enrolled in a parochial school in the next parish over, which was a 10+ minute drive for Mom. Of course we could never walk or ride bicycles or public transit that far! As a child, while I was granted roller skates and bicycles, me and my sister were both forbidden from straying beyond the block where we lived. And neighborhood peers were few and far between. We had few playmates, and nearly none from school. Our classmates were in different socioeconomic classes, and often of different ethnicities and cultures. At least 1/3rd of them were bused in from North County, where new Catholics were settling, but no schools were available yet. Our neighborhood was a sleepy suburb surrounded by dead-end streets and canyons. There were no city parks or playgrounds. There was exactly one city bus line that was about 7 minutes' walk away, which we never ever rode. Grandma, on the other hand, took us on walking/shopping tours all over her neighborhood, which was completely amazing, and also to every shopping mall we could reach by city bus, which was doubly amazing. Grandma's neighborhood had a full-fledged recreational center and a park with a playground, where I could fly kites or do whatever. Here is the paradoxical contrast: though we could have no physical contact with neighbors or friends, I could own any book, watch any TV channel and program, and listen to any radio station whatsoever. That included "border blasters" from Mexico that were intent on corrupting American values. Literally any book we wanted, we could read it or discard it into our voluminous bookshelves. Later, Mom and Dad were reluctant to hook us up with a modem, because they knew what that would mean, but college opened up the entire Internet to us, and it was game over. You can physically shelter your kids all you want, but if you have a TV, a radio, and computers in the home, you're constantly inviting a parade of strangers, scammers, and perverts inside your securely-locked doors. Think about that. It is far kinder to allow your children to mix with neighborhood friends and freely explore this world, than to let them dive unsupervised into cyberspace.
zx8080 6mo ago
This reads like the worst case of the "1984" out in the wild. There's a huge set of initiatives for a maximum control of any individual since childhood under all children-safety laws. Is that really for freedom or democracy? Or is that for something else?
trinsic2 6mo ago
This is the kind of shit that pisses me off: > “We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.” Yeah it's ok for the rest of us, but not your kids. Who the fuck do you guys thing you are? You shouldn't be making society worse.
burnt-resistor 6mo ago
As a kid in the 80's and 90's, I biked up and down deserted, steep mountain fire roads before cell phones were widespread. I hear that risk-tolerance normalization and freedom of kids in the 70's was even greater, so this trend appears to be a multi-decade decline. What I miss most though is cool stuff like interactive art installations and improvised playground features made for kids that were ripped out in the 90's and 00's. Decommissioned Korean war jets, telephone pole obstacle courses, and a myriad of other things without so much as a web page anywhere lost to history.
tsoukase 6mo ago
The lower density culture of the US is problematic for children freedom. In Europe the situation is better but still worse than 30-40 years earlier. Time passes and things change. After 30-40 years there might not be kids anymore to stay locked at home.
arjie 6mo ago
We recently lived in Taiwan for a month and I was struck by the fact that from 2022-2024 Taipei had zero pre-teen traffic fatalities. My own San Francisco neighborhood has had more within the last two months! The only thing that presents a persistent risk to children, I think, is motor vehicles and the way they’re driven. Children make mistakes and San Francisco’s tolerance for traffic fatalities is very high.
- beacon294 6mo ago
  To be fair, you're cherry picking traffic fatality data. It's topical now but it's not common.
  - arjie 6mo ago
    I actually don’t think there’s a single year where San Francisco has seen zero pre-teen traffic deaths. I think even my neighborhood is positive for the last two years. Taipei has more people, more children, and even by a percentage. The number of pre-teen traffic fatalities is the only concern I have when I’m thinking of letting my children walk around because I think the other risks are relatively overblown. Sure we have an occasional Bill Gene Hobbs and the like but I think only traffic fatalities are near certainty. These are for accompanied children, so leaving a 5 year old to wander is way different than when I was 5 years old. In SF, I’d rate the chance of survival to 12 at under 90% for unaccompanied 5 year olds walking around the city along the range that I used to at that time. Teens are pretty self-capable in decision making but pre-teens just don’t have judgment yet. I feel like this is a pretty reasonable statistic to match.
  - xboxnolifes 6mo ago
    There's no need to cherry pick data. The US's traffic fatality record is bad pretty much over the entire country.
effisfor 6mo ago
For another perspective, see Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff. She looked at indigenous cultures alive today and makes the compelling argument that the Western boomers were the outlier - not their kids. 'Free range' meant having no meaningful responsibilities or expectations within the tribe, other than 'do what you like all day'.
gls2ro 6mo ago
Whenever I read these kind articles and some of the comments here I always wonder: Its it survivor bias? I grew up in a small village/city during communism. I was basically unsupervised from morning to night since I have memories about me walking around in that village. We were doing a lot of dangerous things while playing. And there are kids that got injured for life or lost their lives: falling from trees, drawn in a river, leg lost due to a horse injury, losing an eye during a game with some pipes, jumping from high places like 1st floor or more, ... I managed to not get hurt but the examples I gave are real. I am not even talking about any of the fights between kids verbal or physical there were happening that todays will be labeled trauma. So I do wonder if this free range thing that we desire is really what we want and we can accept the consequences? I am not sure in all cases, depending of course of kids age and ability to reason, for each individual child this total liberty is the right path. I do understand the benefit for the society.
silexia 6mo ago
This is what happens when you create a government agency to solve a problem. It eventually turns into a jobs program that cannot be shut down even after the original problem is mostly resolved. So the bureaucrats just shift the goal posts and the whole thing metastases is into a cancer upon society.
ozgurds 6mo ago
Being exposed to many bad news daily from all around the world, unfortunately, all parents are forced to limit their children. And we do it even though we know we are limiting their development as well. Of course there are many neighborhoods that kids still play freely but the ratio is undeniably going down :(
burnerRhodov2 6mo ago
> We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.” Thats... displeasing to hear.

259 points by sylvainkalache 6mo ago

this resonates a lot. I am not sure how to handle this though. Next to our house (500m), the city government established a camp for “asylum seekers”. 100 men. Men only. How can I reasonable let my pre-teen daughters roam freely now? Id love to, but my gut feeling doesnt allow me to. Maybe, back in the days, it was just a different time? A more high trust society that worked well? Nowadays, we have news stories, where 70 year olds get stabbed by youngsters because they got lectures on their bad behaviour. When I was young, I had respect towards a 70 year old. Big time. Never would we have thought to pull out a knife… Life changed a lot in recent years and not for the better on all dimensions. Europe is still pretty save though. At least if you trust the statistics

techjamie 6mo ago
Statistically, we live in the safest society we ever have. We see a lot of bad stuff happening because news reporting travels further and faster than ever before, amplifying the perception the world is going to shit. Plus, now, basically every kid is running around with a phone that gives them access to talk to the police or their parents at any time. So it's going to be a lot riskier for someone to try anything against them. Even then, between 80-90% of sexual assaults are performed by people the victims already know, and around 30% of those are relatives of the victim.
- shrubble 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - realo 6mo ago
    Wow. Are you for real? I thought this kind of bigotry was only used by far right shit to manipulate feeble-minded people. I'll be generous and assume this comment was not made by a human, but by a bot.
    - phyzix5761 6mo ago
      People hold beliefs based on information they've received from sources they perceive as trustworthy. Maybe the sources they're basing their beliefs on are not so trust worthy or maybe they have a different perspective on events. I'm inclined to say its an issue of trustworthiness because the source is likely news and media and those are created for the sole purpose of pushing specific agendas and narratives.
    - ryandrake 6mo ago
      This place has gotten wild in the last few years. Open stormfront-esque comments without any shame whatsoever. It is absolutely nuts the extent to which bigotry has gotten totally normalized.
    - shrubble 6mo ago
      I'll be generous and assume you don't read British news and are unaware of the existence of Rotherham. There was just a big debate in Parliament over an inquiry into the subjects raised.
dghlsakjg 6mo ago
Do you have any evidence or are you just basing your fears on feelings? Has there been a rise in sex attacks associated with this particular refugee housing? You should flip through some newspaper archives from when you were a kid. I don’t know where you are, but I can almost certainly guarantee that there were kids attacking people back then too. Just because you and most you know would never have pulled a knife, doesn’t mean that there weren’t those that would. After all, you say the teens today attack old people with knives, but I really don’t think your teen daughters are stabbing people with knives. How can you reasonably let your teen daughters out alone? Well, be reasonable. Find out if your fears are amped up by sensationalist press. Go meet your refugee neighbours. Quite honestly it sounds like YOU spend too much time inside. Edit: I just saw your comment about importing men from countries where rape is natural. I can’t imagine that we have the same definition of reasonable.
baublet 6mo ago
This is bigotry dressed up as concern. It’s also not something widespread. Seems like you just think immigrants are rapists.
- anothereng 6mo ago
  [flagged]
- hackinthebochs 6mo ago
  It's interesting how much some of you expect us to ignore gut feelings and statistics to avoid the appearance of bigotry. We should at the very least be able to acknowledge statistical reality then we can debate what is an appropriate response. Hell, I don't even need to know the backgrounds of the immigrants. We know that males engage in almost all the violent/forcible sexual assaults. We know that a lack of community engagement increases the chance for anti-social behavior. We know that access is a prerequisite for interpersonal crime. That itself is enough to warrant heightened concern.

roxolotl 6mo ago

I’m reasonably convinced this explains basically everything currently attributed to social media, for children at least, and likely can also help explain some concern around birth rates and child rearing costs. Starting with the satanic panic the US has slowly closed down children’s lives because of concern that terrible things will happen to children if not continually under supervision. And the true is that yes sometimes bad things happen and have always happened. But if you look to many other countries they do not have the same extreme expectations of parents or the state to keep children’s lives locked down.

trallnag 6mo ago
Does the term "satanic panic" also apply to the EU restricting internet access for the youth?
- dghlsakjg 6mo ago
  Satanic panic was a very specific phenomenon in the US.
- coldtea 6mo ago
  No, that's plain old security state motivation hidden behind plain old moral panic justifications nobody buys.

spicyusername 6mo ago

I don't know. Maybe this is going away in some places, maybe I just have my own anecdata, but my kids play outside unsupervised all the time, as do all the kids in my neighborhood. I live in just a regular suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of small Metro. Nothing special about it at all. Every time I see one of these articles I always wonder who they're talking about. I always feel like this is just one of those news headlines that won't go away, but isn't quite tethered to reality, but people really like to feel bad about modern life and so we keep talking about it as if it's real. I suspect the real reason kids aren't playing outside, if there is one, is not because they can't, it's because they choose not to. Just as adults are no longer choosing to go to third spaces. Screens came for everyone.

rayiner 6mo ago
This behavior is probably overrepresented in the bougie places reporters live. I dropped my daughter off at the mall to hang out with their friends and one of the moms followed them around the whole time. They're all 13!
- garbawarb 6mo ago
  Do journalists live in bougie places? It's not a particularly well-paying job.
  - rayiner 6mo ago
    It's a job that requires strong credentials and is gated by unpaid internships. So it disproportionately attracts people from relatively affluent backgrounds: https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/the-costs-of-becoming-a-journalist/ https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/the-cos.... And those folks live near and, more importantly, travel in social circles with affluent people. It's also not particularly expensive to live in a bougie place. I grew up in Mclean, VA. My dad ran into Dick Cheney at the CVS once. But you can get an apartment in Mclean on a journalist's salary, especially if your parents paid for college and you have no debt. You can’t afford to raise a family there, but you can live there, near your social circle. Conversely, you'll see lots of trades people, cops, etc., living in places that aren't bougie at all, despite making more money than the lower end of the professional class. People find ways to congregate around others in their social class, income notwithstanding.

theturtle 6mo ago

[dead]

xtiansimon 6mo ago

My free range childhood friends and I would have been all _get bent_ to that lady—even at 6 yro. I can tell you this because I was also getting a whooping at home from da for saying the same to my ma. I was a dreadful child.

jl6 6mo ago

It’s easier to let kids play around the neighborhood when you know who the neighbors are.

amazingamazing 6mo ago
most acts of abuse to family members are by other family members. ironically strangers are more likely to leave your kid alone than extended family.
- phyzix5761 6mo ago
  That's a problem of access not familiarity.
paulryanrogers 6mo ago
Know which of your neighbors have unsecured firearms lying around. Sadly all to common where I am.

homeonthemtn 6mo ago

I think this is more a data point towards the quiet disappearnce of community / the steady march towards pervasive isolation

Loughla 6mo ago
Correct. There are no communities anymore, just groups of houses. You see it in the death of social and civic organizations, churches, and other community groups. Everybody is an island. I don't know what has caused this, but it seems like it's happening in most 1st world countries. Anyone have insights about this?
- lencastre 6mo ago
  and yet everybody is one discoord channel away from everybody else hundreds if not thousands of km away, eager to talk, voice their opinions etc… crossing the street, meet your neighbor, too much hassle
- GoldenRacer 6mo ago
  There's a book called "Bowling Alone" that explores a lot of ideas around this. Iirc the conclusion is two fold: 1. Historically women were largely responsible for community building. As they joined the workforce, they had less time to community build and so there became less community. 2. Technology allowing home entertainment. People can now stream movies instead of going to theaters. Play computer games instead of go to arcades. Check Facebook instead of call friends to catch up. Use a Keurig for convenient coffee instead of go to a cafe.
- esafak 6mo ago
  I think it depends on the locale. I moved from SF, which is career oriented, to OH, which is family oriented and, as I expected, I found more kids roaming the streets. So if your streets are deserted, ask the locals their views on parenting. Paranoid parents will talk up the safety factor, but it's overblown.
- keybored 6mo ago
  Bourgeoisie society. Not values, not culture, not mindset. It’s rooted in how society is structured. But values, culture, and mindset reinforce it. This very individualistic society can only critique itself in terms of individual failings. Which leads to the catch-22, anti-communal, ankle-deep critiques: people are on their phones, people are asocial, why don’t “people” all get a clue individually and fix this via some spontaneous autoenlightenment.

metalman 6mo ago

here in Canada, social service "baby snatchers" have destroyed basic community cohesion and along with many other wildly out of control beurocratic policing forces, such as the spca making having animals a huge liability, litteral special subdivisions, chicken police, horse police, and an enacted rock police to prevent the totaly illegal practice of picking rocks off a beach, but hey it is legal to pack granma into the back of a motor home and drive her to the government canabis store, get her wrecked, and then take her in so she can ask to be euthanized. cant make this shit up as they say.

dghlsakjg 6mo ago
Wow! Where I live my neighbors have chickens and one has a horse and they never get hassled, the kids roam through the neighborhood under the age of ten without getting picked up by the authorities (well, one time one got lost and a helpful cop brought him home, but that was the end of it), if your dog wanders off animal control will call you to come pick it up (first time they waive the fee), you can collect shells, rocks, driftwood and seaweed for fertilizer off the beach. We have euthanasia but it is a carefully controlled process that involves multiple independent doctors and a lucid patient, and the supermajority (84%) of people approve of it! Canada sounds like a terrible place, but you are more than welcome in the country I call home; Canada. Oh wait…

scelerat 6mo ago

My biggest fear of letting my young kid play alone outside is getting hit by a car.

neogodless 6mo ago
When I was a kid I was taught not to walk in the street. When you walk, you go in the opposite direction of cars and can see them coming and, if necessary, move off to the side more. I know it's survivorship bias, but it worked for me. Now I get that population density is increasing, and probably so is traffic. Though so are automatic safety features that cause cars to brake rather than hit things. Are there statistics on vehicular fatalities in suburbs?
- tomasphan 6mo ago
  Pedestrian traffic deaths are going down again after peaking in 2022. Accidents are less survivable in the US due to bigger cars and higher hoods. Quote from CDC During 2013–2022, U.S. traffic-related death rates increased a relative 50.0% for pedestrians and 22.5% overall, compared with those in 27 other high-income countries, where they declined a median of 24.7% and 19.4%, respectively. Across countries, U.S. pedestrian death rates were highest overall and among persons aged 15–24 and 25–64 years.
- bojan 6mo ago
  The cars are getting bigger. That means that the impact is more deadly, and the line of sight is higher - making it easy to overlook a child. The sensors often won't react at low speeds which are common for residential neighborhoods, and at high speeds they are late anyway.
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    >The cars are getting bigger Wasn't there a trend in the US away from pompous SUVs and towards smaller cars, people even starting to re-evaluate some European-favored "city" cars more? Also aren't cars also getting ligther, with less heavy / metallic exterior over time?

ocdtrekkie 6mo ago

I remember when I was a kid I would bike to a park around a half mile away by myself, definitely before I was 13, and I admit it feels weird to suggest a kid can go to the park down just a single block alone today. The funny thing is it'd be safer: Kids have cell phones now by like 7 or 8 in a lot of cases and can call for help! Back when I was that age if I got injured or something I might've had to knock on strangers' doors!

gehsty 6mo ago

As a parent you feel the push and pull of not ignoring your child while also not mollycoddling them. For me let the kid do what they want - if your kid wants to stay home let them, if they want to climb trees and go off on their bike let them. Help them learn what is safe (which rods can they cross), what are their boundaries. Hopefully they get it, maybe they don’t. Don’t restrict access to devices or screens too harshly. Encourage games of any kind. Wear sunscreen.

kannanvijayan 6mo ago

I have a 10 year old boy and I'm facing these issues right now. I'm also in Canada so culturally adjacent to the US and similar enough with regards to this topic. I don't see child welfare agencies personally as a particular threat when it comes to this topic. Maybe they ARE more likely to get involved in cases of more free range parenting where before they weren't, but it doesn't register as a real worry. The major difference I see between when I was growing up and now is that when I went out onto the streets, there were other kids on the streets. My parents didn't know exactly what they were sending me out to, but they knew that there as a general crowd of kids that would be out on the street until some point in the evening, and that they would all go home at around the same time, and that's also when you were expected home. The draw of smartphones and video games as indoor entertainment can't be understated, but I can exercise some parental tyranny here and always kick him out of the house to go play like my folks used to do. But there are no other kids out there. I'm sending him out into streets empty of kids. To mitigate this I'm trying to nudge things in the direction of him and his friends forming some sort of after-school crew that finds outside activities to do together, undirected. There are other like minded parents that I've found that are also interested in enabling something like this. On the subject of risks - I strongly believe that the role of parenthood is to mediate a child's exposure to the real trauma of a hostile, often absurd reality that they will grow up into. Controlled exposure to risk, to self-directed decision making in times where they feel like someone won't be there to help them out and they need to figure things out on their own, these are critical requirements in parenting IMHO. And all risk comes with some small chance of tragedy, and that's a burden we as parents have to bear: to expose ourselves to the emotional trauma of the possibility of our children getting hurt, however small the chance, so that they are able to grow into healthy well-adjusted adults. I feel like I have to work a lot harder than my parents did to enable that exposure.

testing22321 6mo ago
Small town Canada here. In winter all the kids above school toboggan and slide down the roads (GT racers). All the kids below trudge up carrying their slider of choice. In the afternoon the roles are reversed. Not an adult in sight. At the ski hill kids 5+ roam free- it’s always fun getting on the chairlift and a little kid says “ can you help me get on?” And you have to physically pick them up onto the moving (fixed grip) chairlift. There’s no cell service. Mountain bike trails around town are full of groups of kids 5+. My advice: move to a small town, it’s like going back in time in a very good way.

givemeethekeys 6mo ago

Blame a litigious culture where agencies have far too much power to "fix" other people. People in many places in America live with a fear of losing their children or getting sued and losing everything.

eweise 6mo ago

When my child was an infant, my wife parked in a parking lot and starting chatting with a friend about 10 yards away. Minutes later a woman came by and starting claiming the child was not safe and was going to call protective services. This freaked both of us out that a stranger could potentially have the power to cause the government to become involved with our family. Fortunately, we didn't let that experience prevent us from letting our kids wander freely. But it does just take one over-concerned parent, to get you into trouble.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
mothballed 6mo ago
I had something like that happen I was out of town and forgot most places in America have a way more fascist child snatchers than where I live. The police contacted a national database check, their local child services, and my hometown child services. Thankfully my hometown child services told them to go fuck themselves (the place I live in now thankfully doesn't usually get involved unless there is serious abuse) and the ones in the place I was at didn't have time to deal with it before I left, but they certainly would have if I were a resident there.
- ceayo 6mo ago
  > fascist child snatchers lol
vjvjvjvjghv 6mo ago
A friend of mine was outside with his kids. He read a book and a woman who drove by yelled at him to always watch the kids and not read a book.

sublinear 6mo ago

I do get that it's stressful to raise a family. You're being held accountable for many things you don't have much control over, but I don't think this is a big deal either way. This is a false dichotomy like all the other nonsense aimed at parents. It misses the point entirely to seek control over whether your kids are "free range" enough. That style of parenting worked so well in the past (it didn't really, but I digress) because they left well enough alone. They weren't trying to contrive anything. Your kids absorb everything from you. Don't let your insecurities be part of it. What I would argue is much more important is keeping things fresh with new opportunities. That's your main job as a parent. Keep them thinking and engaged with their mostly self-directed path in life. The goal is to open their eyes and help them understand the world. Respect their intelligence and let them decide things on their own. Many of those so called free range childhoods of the past were actually just empty and boring. That's when they got into trouble. That's not something to be nostalgic about. When I hear about trends like this I have to wonder if some parents are just looking for excuses to be lazy.

seb1204 6mo ago

I have to keep telling my kids that "this is not the USA", all the things they see or hear are so dominated by USA views and experiences that the kids need to be reminded that this should not be transferred to where we live without consideration. This is a constant effort to review concerns and angst that might arise. E.g. school shootings and metal detectors on school entrances. Sure there are socioeconomic issues around when looking at high schools here but not like that. Personally I think we need to ground ourselves and not get shit crazy or paralysed by fear.

polivier 6mo ago

I do feel like we as a society are moving in the direction discussed by the article, as a general trend. But this is not my personal experience. We live in typical suburbs, and we are lucky enough that our street has a bunch of like-minded young families that let their kids play outside. Our street really feels like what you would imagine if you were thinking of a typical street in the 1960s. Kids aged 5 to around 10 playing ball in the street, going in each other's yards/houses, etc. There's a Catholic church less than 1km away, and at 6pm every day the bells ring. All the kids go back to their houses for supper when they hear the bells. It's great. There's a kid (7-8 years old I think) a few houses down that carries a walkie-talkie with him during the summer. He'll be out for several hours (probably not farther than 10 houses away from his own house), and his mom checks on him every now and then using the walkie-talkie. I'll buy a set for own kids this summer for the exact same purpose. The only thing I'm kind of scared of are the cars, because they tend to drive too fast (for my taste) and kids tend to not always look when they cross the street when they're too excited playing their games. Edit: I just remembered that a few years ago, the cops showed up because there was a complaint about our kids being left unsupervised. They were playing in the backyard, which is completely fenced off, while we were inside cooking supper. Our kitchen window faces the yard so we could see them, and the window was open so we could hear them. At least the cops realized that the complaint was BS and didn't even come inside to check for anything. We live in Canada.

skrrtww 6mo ago

> “We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.” It's disgusting that this has become a casual attitude and admission by the tech worker class. No one should be getting this free pass. "I am actively harming children and society with my livelihood (except my own, because I am so smart). Here I am proudly and smugly stating this in a news article."

pickledish 6mo ago
Don't know why you were downvoted -- I scoffed at that part too. The least we in tech can do is have some self-awareness
tmseidman 6mo ago
I disagree- I think it's not much different than working at a distillery or cigar company (wrappery?). Social media is a vice not very different than whiskey or cigars- they're addictive, feel good in the short term, and are problematic to have too much or to do habitually. But we still let people indulge in them because they're fine in small quantities for responsible adults, and we expect that parents will not let their kids have access to them. The only differences as far as I can see are in buying- a child could technically buy a phone for themself if they had the money and create an account on Instagram for free, and in cultural recognition of social media as a vice, which I believe is starting to change. The overall point is, the law should assume that adults are reasonably intelligent and responsible people, and that parents should be the ones responsible for parenting their own children their own way.
- projektfu 6mo ago
  Don't get high on your own supply. Famous advice.
- keybored 6mo ago
  > But we still let people indulge in them because We want to make money. > The overall point is, the law should assume that adults are reasonably intelligent and responsible people, Over cigarettes and alcohol. The most inconsequential stuff. But don’t say the words “direct democracy”.[1] Then people being reasonably intelligent and responsible gets forgotten. By the hive mind at least. But people should be assumed to be reasonably intelligent and responsible. If that narrative allows us to make money off them. Not when it comes to democracy and political autonomy, of course. Shudders. Where’s the option for people who are weak willed when it comes to something? Can they ban themselves from buying these goods? If not, where are the heroes that are working on that? > and that parents should be the ones responsible for parenting their own children their own way. There are whole studies of psychology weaponized against children to make them act as consumer proxies for their parents. To optimize nagging. But every pair of parent for themselves. Against all of marketing. “Responsibility.” Because that makes money. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=b65e8bee43c2ed0 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=b65e8bee43c2ed0

beej71 6mo ago

I recently revisited my childhood town and walked from my childhood home to my school. I hadn't done that for nearly 50 years. It was shorter than I remember, of course, but it was still several blocks. The last time I walked it, I was five. I also learned to ride a bicycle when I was five, so that took the place of walking for the latter part of the kindergarten school year. I arrived at the school just as it was getting out for the day. I did not see a single student of any age leave without an adult. Like so many people of my generation, I can only wonder at the cost, and be grateful that I was born when I was.

chairmansteve 6mo ago

Yeah. Not seeing it. The local neighbourhood here in Arizona is infested with 12 year olds on e-bikes. It's great.

mothballed 6mo ago
It work on the dirt-bike tier e-bikes because they can get away. IF they are walking my child has been harassed by Karens asking "why they are out on their own." I look forward to the day they are old enough to ride a fast enough e-bike to escape people with cell phones that will rat them out for being out and about. I largely blame cell phones for the Karens being able to impose their will. When I was a kid we were all out about and/or doing dumb shit, but anyone who wanted to call the authorities had to go home to find a telephone. By that time we were long gone. As long as we didn't go near houses, no one could touch us. Now they will just follow the kid with their cellphone until the rat-fuckers from CPS or the police arrive.
- garbawarb 6mo ago
  We tell children not to talk to strangers but if a random adult goes up to a child and says something like "Why are you out on your own," what are they supposed to do? Thankfully this never happened to me as a child, I don't even know what I'd do.
  - 3eb7988a1663 6mo ago
    "Nothing at all until you groped me, Karen. Don't make me call the cops on you, pedo"

DaedalusII 6mo ago

america is more dangerous than many 3rd world and developing countries on the street once my friend get arrested in LA by police when he jogging. they say they arrest him for his own safety because he shouldnt be out jogging in "this neighborhood" turns out people in america get murdered and attacked in the street all the time for... no reason. yes literally, no motive.

mothballed 6mo ago
Me and my child were detained by the police in a park because my child is a different race and some Karen called it in as suspicious and I was detained as a "kidnapper." I ended up buying acreage in the country just to escape all the pieces of shit that would harass me and my child for playing outside. The danger to children is largely the police and CPS, who rip apart families for hallucinations or levels of parenting sin that are far more benign than the emotional cost to children of authorities bearing down on them.
- DaedalusII 6mo ago
  you are a real american now, you play outside in your private land that you drive to. there is peace in the universe again now, if your child is too playful for Ms. Karen, they will give them a shit load of adderal as well you may consider paying for a private school to avoid Karens drugging your children
coldtea 6mo ago
Also so conditioned to this warzone levels of violence, that many consider them normal, or will cite stats with 5x-10x the violence of an equivalent sized city in the rest of the West and East saying "that's good odds, just X of 100K murdered last year".
Barrin92 6mo ago
>america is more dangerous than many 3rd world it isn't. Crime is highly concentrated and the vast majority of, at least median affluent America, is about as safe as it gets. Same goes for any big cities, usually you can count risky streets on one hand, where 90% of the violence happens. Not to mention, developing countries are if anything the only places where kids still run around and play on the street. I've spend a fair amount of time in Latin American countries with much higher violent crime rates than most of the world and you don't see much helicopter parenting if anything in the first world this style of parenting is a result of excess safety, not lack of it. The world has seen a secular decline in violent crime over the last few decades, and yet this paranoia is distinctly new.

Grappelli 6mo ago

[flagged]

pandaman 6mo ago
How are abduction rates extremely low? Where did you get the rates? I could only find FBI NCIC reports, which do not differentiate the reason, but it shows 300K+ missing children in 2025. That's quite a lot. It does not say what fraction of those are abductions, but I doubt it makes a big difference for the parents looking for the missing child if the reason for the child missing is an abduction or something else. Also, AMBER alerts go off so often that everyone I know turns off alerts on their phones. Still see them on highway displays all the time.
- SapporoChris 6mo ago
  Certainly the differences matter. If the vast majority of the abductions are 'Parental child abduction' and very few children are abducted by strangers. "On average, fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year since 2010, the FBI says. From 2010 through 2017, the most recent data available, the number has ranged from a low of 303 in 2016 to a high of 384 in 2011 with no clear directional trend." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-missinggirl-data/kidnapped-children-make-headlines-but-abduction-is-rare-in-u-s-idUSKCN1P52BJ/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-missinggirl-dat... I would say that abduction by stranger rates are very low.
  - pandaman 6mo ago
    It's bizarre, I have people responding with outdated or anachronistic statistics again on HN. Is this because LLMs get trained to a certain date? 2017 was almost 10 years ago. Also, for some reason "abducted by strangers" is not the only alternative to "parental abductions", this document, for example [1], differentiate "non-family" and "strangers" for whatever reason. And "non-family" abductions were ~60K in 1999! Pay for a better LLM, don't use the free stuff for your botting. 1. https://childfindofamerica.org/resources/facts-and-stats-missing-children/?utm_source=copilot.com https://childfindofamerica.org/resources/facts-and-stats-mis...

zkmon 6mo ago

It's not isolated phenomenon.If we look at the larger scale of, say, 100 years, a lot of things are rapidly disappearing. It's actually some sort of extinction that is underway, but you don't feel it on a smaller scale of time. Similar to how Romans wouldn't have been aware of the Fall of Roman empire while it was happening, because it was too slow to notice.

ceayo 6mo ago
Can you give some examples of things rapidly disappearing?
- FloorEgg 6mo ago
  The average person's ability to acquire food from nature (farm, hunt, gather) and cook it for themselves. The average person ability to make and fix their own tools. Build and fix their shelter. Free range childhood. Average person getting dirt under their fingernails. Being in sync with sunlight cycle. Stargazing at night. These are off the top of my head (I'm not op).
  - rao-v 6mo ago
    I don’t think in 1926 more than 50% of global 15-20 year olds could: “acquire food from nature (farm, hunt, gather) and cook it for themselves.” Or “make and fix their own tools. Build and fix their shelter.” (Culturally, those tasks often specialize by vocation, gender etc.)
    - kube-system 6mo ago
      They absolutely could. A quarter of Americans’ primary job was agriculture in the 1920s. While job specialization was certainly a thing that didn’t mean people outsourced all of these tasks the way people do today.
      - rao-v 6mo ago
        That’s different from solo gather and cook and repair which is the artificially inflated bar being set here. I know people from multiple parts of the world who grew up on family working farms - specializing very real (esp. gender based)

neuroelectron 6mo ago

>What changed? In a 2023 article for Psychology Today, Gray proposed some factors that began reshaping parents’ attitudes and children’s behavior around the middle of the century: “the arrival of television, the rise of adult-directed kids’ sports, the gradual exclusion of kids from public spaces, the declining opportunities for gainful employment or meaningful contributions to the family economy, and, finally, the increased mandate that kids must be constantly monitored and protected.” You will see lots of kids free-ranging in Lakewood, NJ. A lot of families there have banned TV from the home.

semiquaver 6mo ago
That paragraph bothered me. It gives a strong “assuming the conclusion” vibe. Oh, a factor reshaping parents attitudes is a “mandate that kids must be constantly monitored and protected” (in other words, parents’ attitudes)? You don’t say.
- ls612 6mo ago
  No, the mandate is enforced by the government coming and taking away your children by force, for some indeterminate period of time, until your lawyer goes in front of a judge and (hopefully) the judge rules that the government is stupid and should give you your kids back. But by then the damage is done. One has to think if a state wanted to eliminate individualism in society this application of surveillance and restraint to children would be entirely by design...
hawaiianbrah 6mo ago
Lakewood is a fascinating place, to be sure!
projektfu 6mo ago
The takeover of US kids soccer by club soccer is disturbing to me. Generally kids who play are either well off or extremely talented (called "scholarship"?). I think the clubs suck the fun out of it. Even with the expense, American players perform much worse than players in other countries where the kids have just been playing for fun for years until they start getting paid.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

KnuthIsGod 6mo ago

On the other hand, stuff happens. Depends on your risk appetite and your systems tolerance for the inevitable consequences of errors... A 5 year old free range kid on a scooter died outside a nearby school a few months ago. Hit by a SUV Was riding back from primary school on a scooter, without the mother. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-14/islah-metcalfe-rouse-hill-public-school-two-more-students-struck/106007398 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-14/islah-metcalfe-rouse-... A massive investigation, police, social services, traffic consultants, a million plus spent on upgrading safety, mother and father demonised in the community,etc ... Teachers involved who responded or gave CPR ( I know some of them) given counselling. The mother is likely to have lost custody of her other children.

namero999 6mo ago
As a counter example, I witnessed 3 months ago a similar scene in my neighborhood, where a kid on a bike, crossing on pedestrian stripes, was hit by a taxi. It was a bad accident but luckily he didn't die. His dad was following right behind him. I'm leaning to think that "shit happens" in any case, but overprotection adds on top another layer of subtle, long term risks.
projektfu 6mo ago
There was no support in the link for your assertion that the mother is likely to lose custody. Money was raised in support of the parents. Your link says two other children were struck at the same intersection before this, and the municipality didn't take notice. Yet you blame the parents for not driving to school instead of the driver of the truck, and the traffic situation? This is really the problem.

ww520 6mo ago

Gen X was the last free range children. They ran wild after school without the tethering cell phones, playing in sand and drinking from garden hoses. The silent generation turned out to be a great generation building most of modern technologies.

semiquaver 6mo ago

Judging by this comment thread, this is just not something HN is capable of having a reasonable discussion on.

QuarterReptile 6mo ago

I think Maryland deserves a special shoutout. It's illegal, and not just in a CPS-steamrolls-your-rights-and-family sort of way, for an 8 year old to be left with children <13. Growing up, I think many girls had ended their babysitting careers by 13.

croisillon 6mo ago

Related: 2017 (but based on a 2007 DailyMail article), 520 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13547089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13547089

jhoechtl 6mo ago

A delicate topic with many perspectives. Our small families make it possible to devote so much energy to our kids. However autonomy is all so important to become a strong adult later. We deliberately need let go more than we do now.

alexpotato 6mo ago

As a relatively "free range" child in my youth and now the parent of children, even I find it hard to reconcile how I feel differently that my parents. e.g. at 10 years old, my cousins and I were running around in the woods at my gradparents' home in rural Pennsylvania. I was the oldest of the group with my youngest cousin probably being 6. No cell phones. No Apple watches etc. We were outside of that house around 9am and would come back for lunch and then dinner when my grandmother rang the bell. My oldest has an Apple watch and is both reachable able trackable yet the above still feels little strange to me.

insane_dreamer 6mo ago

Social media, and instant news media (scary news sells), amplify the perception of danger, where the numbers don't back it up. > Stranger kidnappings are exceptionally rare. They occur roughly 100 times per year, which works out to a 1-in-720,000 annual risk of a child being kidnapped — less likely than being struck by lightning at some point in their life. > A Pew Research Center survey from 2022 found that about 60% of U.S. parents were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about their children being kidnapped,

insane_dreamer 6mo ago

In the late 70s early 80s I went to school in another town from ages 11-13 and would take a train + bus to get there. Was perfectly normal. This was in France though, not US. I let my 13 year old go out by himself, walk to places, take the street car; he has a phone so he can contact us if he needs help, and we can see where he is if we're concerned. It's ironic that parents are more worried today when technology makes it much _easier_ to track/communicate with your child (back in the day at that age, when I was out of the house my parents had no way of reaching me).

firesteelrain 6mo ago

This has to be a limited area where this idea of “free range” is a problem. Where I live is middle to upper middle class and there are kids everywhere. Electric motorized bicycles have made them even more mobile.

ButlerianJihad 6mo ago

In my childhood, my Mom said "we were the first Democrats in the neighborhood" as part of a new wave of young families. But we were also next door to the gayest neighborhood in San Diego (Hillcrest) and so our neighbors were mostly childless, and our Catholic parish had no school attached, for obvious reasons. So, we were sort of carpetbaggers from the beginning. We were enrolled in a parochial school in the next parish over, which was a 10+ minute drive for Mom. Of course we could never walk or ride bicycles or public transit that far! As a child, while I was granted roller skates and bicycles, me and my sister were both forbidden from straying beyond the block where we lived. And neighborhood peers were few and far between. We had few playmates, and nearly none from school. Our classmates were in different socioeconomic classes, and often of different ethnicities and cultures. At least 1/3rd of them were bused in from North County, where new Catholics were settling, but no schools were available yet. Our neighborhood was a sleepy suburb surrounded by dead-end streets and canyons. There were no city parks or playgrounds. There was exactly one city bus line that was about 7 minutes' walk away, which we never ever rode. Grandma, on the other hand, took us on walking/shopping tours all over her neighborhood, which was completely amazing, and also to every shopping mall we could reach by city bus, which was doubly amazing. Grandma's neighborhood had a full-fledged recreational center and a park with a playground, where I could fly kites or do whatever. Here is the paradoxical contrast: though we could have no physical contact with neighbors or friends, I could own any book, watch any TV channel and program, and listen to any radio station whatsoever. That included "border blasters" from Mexico that were intent on corrupting American values. Literally any book we wanted, we could read it or discard it into our voluminous bookshelves. Later, Mom and Dad were reluctant to hook us up with a modem, because they knew what that would mean, but college opened up the entire Internet to us, and it was game over. You can physically shelter your kids all you want, but if you have a TV, a radio, and computers in the home, you're constantly inviting a parade of strangers, scammers, and perverts inside your securely-locked doors. Think about that. It is far kinder to allow your children to mix with neighborhood friends and freely explore this world, than to let them dive unsupervised into cyberspace.

zx8080 6mo ago

This reads like the worst case of the "1984" out in the wild. There's a huge set of initiatives for a maximum control of any individual since childhood under all children-safety laws. Is that really for freedom or democracy? Or is that for something else?

trinsic2 6mo ago

This is the kind of shit that pisses me off: > “We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.” Yeah it's ok for the rest of us, but not your kids. Who the fuck do you guys thing you are? You shouldn't be making society worse.

burnt-resistor 6mo ago

As a kid in the 80's and 90's, I biked up and down deserted, steep mountain fire roads before cell phones were widespread. I hear that risk-tolerance normalization and freedom of kids in the 70's was even greater, so this trend appears to be a multi-decade decline. What I miss most though is cool stuff like interactive art installations and improvised playground features made for kids that were ripped out in the 90's and 00's. Decommissioned Korean war jets, telephone pole obstacle courses, and a myriad of other things without so much as a web page anywhere lost to history.

tsoukase 6mo ago

The lower density culture of the US is problematic for children freedom. In Europe the situation is better but still worse than 30-40 years earlier. Time passes and things change. After 30-40 years there might not be kids anymore to stay locked at home.

arjie 6mo ago

We recently lived in Taiwan for a month and I was struck by the fact that from 2022-2024 Taipei had zero pre-teen traffic fatalities. My own San Francisco neighborhood has had more within the last two months! The only thing that presents a persistent risk to children, I think, is motor vehicles and the way they’re driven. Children make mistakes and San Francisco’s tolerance for traffic fatalities is very high.

beacon294 6mo ago
To be fair, you're cherry picking traffic fatality data. It's topical now but it's not common.
- arjie 6mo ago
  I actually don’t think there’s a single year where San Francisco has seen zero pre-teen traffic deaths. I think even my neighborhood is positive for the last two years. Taipei has more people, more children, and even by a percentage. The number of pre-teen traffic fatalities is the only concern I have when I’m thinking of letting my children walk around because I think the other risks are relatively overblown. Sure we have an occasional Bill Gene Hobbs and the like but I think only traffic fatalities are near certainty. These are for accompanied children, so leaving a 5 year old to wander is way different than when I was 5 years old. In SF, I’d rate the chance of survival to 12 at under 90% for unaccompanied 5 year olds walking around the city along the range that I used to at that time. Teens are pretty self-capable in decision making but pre-teens just don’t have judgment yet. I feel like this is a pretty reasonable statistic to match.
- xboxnolifes 6mo ago
  There's no need to cherry pick data. The US's traffic fatality record is bad pretty much over the entire country.

effisfor 6mo ago

For another perspective, see Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff. She looked at indigenous cultures alive today and makes the compelling argument that the Western boomers were the outlier - not their kids. 'Free range' meant having no meaningful responsibilities or expectations within the tribe, other than 'do what you like all day'.

gls2ro 6mo ago

Whenever I read these kind articles and some of the comments here I always wonder: Its it survivor bias? I grew up in a small village/city during communism. I was basically unsupervised from morning to night since I have memories about me walking around in that village. We were doing a lot of dangerous things while playing. And there are kids that got injured for life or lost their lives: falling from trees, drawn in a river, leg lost due to a horse injury, losing an eye during a game with some pipes, jumping from high places like 1st floor or more, ... I managed to not get hurt but the examples I gave are real. I am not even talking about any of the fights between kids verbal or physical there were happening that todays will be labeled trauma. So I do wonder if this free range thing that we desire is really what we want and we can accept the consequences? I am not sure in all cases, depending of course of kids age and ability to reason, for each individual child this total liberty is the right path. I do understand the benefit for the society.

silexia 6mo ago

This is what happens when you create a government agency to solve a problem. It eventually turns into a jobs program that cannot be shut down even after the original problem is mostly resolved. So the bureaucrats just shift the goal posts and the whole thing metastases is into a cancer upon society.

ozgurds 6mo ago

Being exposed to many bad news daily from all around the world, unfortunately, all parents are forced to limit their children. And we do it even though we know we are limiting their development as well. Of course there are many neighborhoods that kids still play freely but the ratio is undeniably going down :(

burnerRhodov2 6mo ago

> We work in tech,” she says. “Our kids [aren’t] getting any cell phones, no smartphones, no Instagrams. I write the algorithms. I don’t want my kids to touch those algorithms.” Thats... displeasing to hear.