7 ms·

How odd. America is much safer than it used to be, but people are more afraid. My father walked to and from school every day in Montreal when he was young, for

by graeme 12y ago

How odd. America is much safer than it used to be, but people are more afraid. My father walked to and from school every day in Montreal when he was young, for a good half hour each way I believe. He'd go in a group with kids from the neighborhood, there were no adults. I walked to school every morning in Canada starting from age six, alone. I didn't live far from school, but if I had lived further I still would have walked alone. Lots of kids in my neighborhood walked alone. This was the early 1990s.

forgottenpass 12y ago
but people are more afraid. The media has taught us to be afraid. Not maliciously so. It makes us better consumers, the metric they're paid to optimize.
- niels_olson 12y ago
  I walked to school, about a mile each way, every day from 3rd to 5th grade. We routinely walked to a pool over half a mile away in the summer. We walked to the dentist, we walked to the dairy store for milk. My mom would give me 75 cents and tell me to go get a gallon of milk, which gets heavy quick.
- godkingjim 12y ago
  Fear sells. Thats it. Thats the only reason media exhaustively reports on crime. There is no corporatist/consumerist conspiracy. It sells so they do it.
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  > Not maliciously so. The vast majority of media people cannot be malicious, sure - but looking at some of the corporate higher-ups, I'm less inclined to absolve them of moral issues.
vilhelm_s 12y ago
Perhaps some of the increased safety comes from people being more afraid and therefore taking more precautions now? So it's not necessarily a contradiction. Edit: Also, I think some of the safety culture comes from diminishing returns. E.g., in the 1950s industrial workplace safety was extremely poor by modern standards. But the people who worked there had just been through world war II, so the risk must have seemed low by comparison. Similarly, the 1990s probably had a bunch of risks which we have solved now---e.g. cars are safer now, and violent crime is lower. So we start worrying about higher-hanging fruit, such as children's commute to school.
- graeme 12y ago
  It's always worth considering alternative hypotheses, but I don't think this one holds true. I've lived in dangerous places. North Americans take very few safety precautions. In general: * People aren't aware of their surroundings. Often have headphones. * People wave phones around in the air, hold them loosely, or leave them dangling out of back pockets. * People use public ATMs, in insecure locations, and don't pay attention to machine safety or who is nearby. * People will walk down a street with no one on it without increasing their vigilance level. * They carry no cash to hand over in the event of a mugging These are behaviors that will get you robbed, fast, in a lot of places. That this stuff doesn't happen in modern north america with speaks to improved policing, cameras, etc. or fewer people making criminal attempts. As far as child safety goes, they were never at much risk in public from strangers then or now. I'm prepared to be proven wrong by stats on that point, since I haven't looked it up, but IIRC most crimes against children are done by family or people the child knows.
  - aianus 12y ago
    In most of the world children ride around two or three-up on the back of their parents' motorcycles with no helmets or insurance. North Americans are paranoid freaks in comparison.
    - graeme 12y ago
      I meant safety precautions against crime. I think that's what the article was about, though maybe social services had other concerns as well.
      - fishnchips 12y ago
        As a parent I would not be afraid of crime but of traffic.
  - repsilat 12y ago
    I understood most of what you said, but I'm not sure about > * They carry no cash to hand over in the event of a mugging Can you elaborate on this point? I'd be surprised if thieves thought, "Jeez, nothing to steal from this one, I'd better at least stab them or I won't have done anything wrong..."
pdabbadabba 12y ago
I don't know whether I agree with your general sentiment or not. But maybe we should consider whether your response to this article is itself an illustration of the very phenomenon that leads us to perceive the world as more dangerous as it is. The usual account of why we live in such irrational fear is that nobody wants to hear about things going well, and everyone being safe and happy on the news. Anyone who watches the news, therefore, sees a distilled tale of conflict and woe. But this article is may well be doing the same thing. What have we learned from this article? Two kids, walking down the street, were stopped by police, and a social services investigation was triggered. We get virtually no information about the broader context: does this sport of thing happen often, or was this an anomaly? What will be the outcome of the investigation be? In short, just as the strife you see on the news can make a person think the world is more dangerous than it is, the isolated examples of our culture running off the rails can have the same distorting effect.
- graeme 12y ago
  To be clear, I don't think this kind of thing is common. But it's also not common to see children walking alone in America, at least in the parts I've been to. It's the latter that's the problem. The former is merely a symptom of the latter, whether or not it is common.
  - ashark 12y ago
    In much of Suburbia you'll at least get some funny looks walking along certain streets, unless you're obviously out specifically for exercise (wearing exercise clothes, walking/jogging with a purpose) or otherwise have some sort of suspicion-shield, like a stroller, and aren't wearing clothes that look too cheap or dirty. Skin color is probably also a factor. Walking to get places is for criminals or poor people :-(
    - SiVal 12y ago
      I don't know what places you are referring to as "much of Suburbia", but a large number of us who read HN live in Silicon Valley suburbs where you see people walking around all the time. Kids on skateboards, groups of young, Indian software developers, joggers, solo guys like me walking along listening to podcasts, old Chinese couples, parents walking over to a student-teacher conference, teens walking over to friends' houses to play video games, etc. That's the way it was where I grew up on the East Coast (minus the Chinese and Indians), and the way it was around Harvard when I lived in Cambridge, and the way it is now here in Silicon Valley. I'm not saying that no such places exist. You might be describing those few neighborhoods that are mostly populated by wealthy retirees whose kids have grown up and left, but this is hardly the general case in American suburbs.
rayiner 12y ago
I imagine parents react to not the world as it is, but as it was when they were growing up. The current world is really heavily shaped by a generation of people that: 1) had a very comfortable upbringing (i.e. are not used to loss); 2) spent most of their formative years under the threat of nuclear holocaust, skyrocketing crime, etc. My friends and I are entering our parenting years (my wife and I are 30), and we are already noticing how much more laid back we are than our parents growing up. Not to mention this place is in the DC Metro, which is uniquely uptight and unpleasant among American localities.

by graeme 12y ago

forgottenpass 12y ago

but people are more afraid. The media has taught us to be afraid. Not maliciously so. It makes us better consumers, the metric they're paid to optimize.

niels_olson 12y ago
I walked to school, about a mile each way, every day from 3rd to 5th grade. We routinely walked to a pool over half a mile away in the summer. We walked to the dentist, we walked to the dairy store for milk. My mom would give me 75 cents and tell me to go get a gallon of milk, which gets heavy quick.
godkingjim 12y ago
Fear sells. Thats it. Thats the only reason media exhaustively reports on crime. There is no corporatist/consumerist conspiracy. It sells so they do it.
Florin_Andrei 12y ago
> Not maliciously so. The vast majority of media people cannot be malicious, sure - but looking at some of the corporate higher-ups, I'm less inclined to absolve them of moral issues.

vilhelm_s 12y ago

Perhaps some of the increased safety comes from people being more afraid and therefore taking more precautions now? So it's not necessarily a contradiction. Edit: Also, I think some of the safety culture comes from diminishing returns. E.g., in the 1950s industrial workplace safety was extremely poor by modern standards. But the people who worked there had just been through world war II, so the risk must have seemed low by comparison. Similarly, the 1990s probably had a bunch of risks which we have solved now---e.g. cars are safer now, and violent crime is lower. So we start worrying about higher-hanging fruit, such as children's commute to school.

graeme 12y ago
It's always worth considering alternative hypotheses, but I don't think this one holds true. I've lived in dangerous places. North Americans take very few safety precautions. In general: * People aren't aware of their surroundings. Often have headphones. * People wave phones around in the air, hold them loosely, or leave them dangling out of back pockets. * People use public ATMs, in insecure locations, and don't pay attention to machine safety or who is nearby. * People will walk down a street with no one on it without increasing their vigilance level. * They carry no cash to hand over in the event of a mugging These are behaviors that will get you robbed, fast, in a lot of places. That this stuff doesn't happen in modern north america with speaks to improved policing, cameras, etc. or fewer people making criminal attempts. As far as child safety goes, they were never at much risk in public from strangers then or now. I'm prepared to be proven wrong by stats on that point, since I haven't looked it up, but IIRC most crimes against children are done by family or people the child knows.
- aianus 12y ago
  In most of the world children ride around two or three-up on the back of their parents' motorcycles with no helmets or insurance. North Americans are paranoid freaks in comparison.
  - graeme 12y ago
    I meant safety precautions against crime. I think that's what the article was about, though maybe social services had other concerns as well.
    - fishnchips 12y ago
      As a parent I would not be afraid of crime but of traffic.
- repsilat 12y ago
  I understood most of what you said, but I'm not sure about > * They carry no cash to hand over in the event of a mugging Can you elaborate on this point? I'd be surprised if thieves thought, "Jeez, nothing to steal from this one, I'd better at least stab them or I won't have done anything wrong..."

pdabbadabba 12y ago

I don't know whether I agree with your general sentiment or not. But maybe we should consider whether your response to this article is itself an illustration of the very phenomenon that leads us to perceive the world as more dangerous as it is. The usual account of why we live in such irrational fear is that nobody wants to hear about things going well, and everyone being safe and happy on the news. Anyone who watches the news, therefore, sees a distilled tale of conflict and woe. But this article is may well be doing the same thing. What have we learned from this article? Two kids, walking down the street, were stopped by police, and a social services investigation was triggered. We get virtually no information about the broader context: does this sport of thing happen often, or was this an anomaly? What will be the outcome of the investigation be? In short, just as the strife you see on the news can make a person think the world is more dangerous than it is, the isolated examples of our culture running off the rails can have the same distorting effect.

graeme 12y ago
To be clear, I don't think this kind of thing is common. But it's also not common to see children walking alone in America, at least in the parts I've been to. It's the latter that's the problem. The former is merely a symptom of the latter, whether or not it is common.
- ashark 12y ago
  In much of Suburbia you'll at least get some funny looks walking along certain streets, unless you're obviously out specifically for exercise (wearing exercise clothes, walking/jogging with a purpose) or otherwise have some sort of suspicion-shield, like a stroller, and aren't wearing clothes that look too cheap or dirty. Skin color is probably also a factor. Walking to get places is for criminals or poor people :-(
  - SiVal 12y ago
    I don't know what places you are referring to as "much of Suburbia", but a large number of us who read HN live in Silicon Valley suburbs where you see people walking around all the time. Kids on skateboards, groups of young, Indian software developers, joggers, solo guys like me walking along listening to podcasts, old Chinese couples, parents walking over to a student-teacher conference, teens walking over to friends' houses to play video games, etc. That's the way it was where I grew up on the East Coast (minus the Chinese and Indians), and the way it was around Harvard when I lived in Cambridge, and the way it is now here in Silicon Valley. I'm not saying that no such places exist. You might be describing those few neighborhoods that are mostly populated by wealthy retirees whose kids have grown up and left, but this is hardly the general case in American suburbs.

rayiner 12y ago

I imagine parents react to not the world as it is, but as it was when they were growing up. The current world is really heavily shaped by a generation of people that: 1) had a very comfortable upbringing (i.e. are not used to loss); 2) spent most of their formative years under the threat of nuclear holocaust, skyrocketing crime, etc. My friends and I are entering our parenting years (my wife and I are 30), and we are already noticing how much more laid back we are than our parents growing up. Not to mention this place is in the DC Metro, which is uniquely uptight and unpleasant among American localities.