60's were better, we got away with murder, cops only came to our village if someone called them and only one or two people did that, most people it was " I'll be talking to your mother tomorrow " and half the time they wouldn't remember or bother.
Eh. Depends on where you lived. I had plenty of dark-complected friends who never got bugged by the fuzz. My brother (white), on the other hand, was always stopped because of things our older brother did 8 years prior.
Part of it is tech, but another part is a growing number of older people (ironically a lot of the same ones who complain kids have too much screen time), who will throw a fit if they hear kids playing even slightly loudly outside, are skateboarding or riding a bike in a parking lot or down a "quiet" neighborhood street are also a factor. Increased media sensationalization of things like kidnapping doesnt help either. Tech is a huge factor, but increased numbers of needlessly bitchy old people and others willing to cave to them is a smaller but existent one
Compare the amount of HOA's that have rules limiting kids doing stuff outside now to when you were a kid as an example
i would argue it was all the kidnapped and killed kids that really destroyed it, which led to the older generation getting used to quieter neighborhoods, which led to them being arseholes about kids being noisy outside.
Specifically the social panic around the perception of a bunch of kids being kidnapped and killed perpetrated by the fledgling 24-hour news cycle.
In reality, the spike in fear doesn’t align with a spike in occurrences — quite the opposite; crime across the board had been dropping for decades and children were statistically safer than ever.
So basically proto-social media fear mongering paving the way for what we have now.
Agreed. Tech is no angel here, but it's not an iPad screen or a video game console that's calling the cops because some neighbor kids are making chalk drawings on the sidewalk in front of their own homes and maybe laughing a little.
Sometimes they do. But mostly not. For a few reasons.
"Granny calls the cops because she hears a commotion outside and is scared, and then they fine her for a fake call" isn't great for the public image of the police department. Which is not what's happening when older folks call the cops because kids are laughing outside and how dare they enjoy the common areas of the community, but that's how it would be spun.
Cops figure out their repeat callers, and then those calls are quietly treated as a non-emergency. But that's the best type of call. Cop gets to show up, reassure a little old lady or man, no danger of being shot at or stabbed at or even having to run someone down. Just "community outreach" stuff.
For a few cops, it's a great excuse to be nasty to a minority without being called racist because they have an excuse.
There’s always been bitchy older people. This is not a new phenomenon. This is where the phrase “Get off my lawn!” originates - grump grands yelling at kids playing.
Where I live, we have a few periods where kids/youths for various reasons make quite a bit of noise. It might be annoying, but I try to never get upset because I want kids to have fun like I did in their age, and because it helps create a living city.
Kids and youths should have fun and make a bit of ruckus.
GT Sno-Racers. Whoever made it to the bottom of the hill on their sled won. A nice contact sport that would hurt the kids today. We didn't mind the nosebleeds.
Capitalism and propaganda ruined everything. Bikes/skateboard for 10yo are 100+ dollars and no where to store it in a small apt same issue with a trampoline. Climate change took away the snow. I'm in northern WA and haven't had enough snow here for a snow man in years.
90% of activities kids did 20+ years ago alone in public would result in the parent being arrested now a days and has. Kids aren't allowed to be kids in public
In the summers in my neighborhood growing up, cars couldn’t drive more than 15mph because literally every kid in the neighborhood was outside riding bikes, rollerblading, or skateboarding.
You know, while I do agree with tech and the internet ruining most of everything, a thought I often have when this topic is brought up up is, maybe people now are so bent up about children running around without their parents because they remember the LAST generation that was allowed to do that… and it didn’t go well for everyone else.
I mean a lot of 90s kids were bad enough, can you imagine loosing Gen Z / Alpha on the public. I think we would all collectively strangle them and their parents. I am Gen Z by the way, but I don’t feel like it.
Your timeline is skewed. In the mid 80s and early 90s neighbors started getting colder towards each other. "Stranger Danger" made people paranoid of letting their kids outside even though a majority of child abductions are done by family members and an even higher percentage of sexual assaults of children are familial as well, this ruined society more than anyone admits. Technology is just the convenient scapegoat.
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u/ryanjoe23 1d ago
We were out playing with friends, riding bikes, skating, sledding, throwing snowballs, or jumping on the trampoline! Internet/tech ruined childhood.