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by AussieWog93 1625 days ago
You state this with a lot of confidence!

>Urban planning is setup so you can't get anywhere without a car so kids are stuck online all day.

This wasn't a problem in the 70s and 80s. Kids would just ride their bikes everywhere.

>We don't have public spaces where you aren't expected to spend money.

Apart from playgrounds, parks, libraries, community groups, all kinds of events... I don't think we've ever had more free public services than in the 21st century.

>Our food is tainted and industrialized to have less nutrition.

This is true for processed food, but we still have less malnutrition (macro and micro) today compared to any point in the 20th century.

I think it's really easy to pick the popular talking points from one's tribe and pose them as the problem/solution in any particular situation. If the goal is to actually identify/solve the problem, though, this more often than not is ineffective.

5 comments

In many places in the US they'll take your kids into protective custody if you leave them unsupervised.
Happened to a friend at work. Quiet neighborhood, the park is literally on the other side of the lazy street. He was watching his kid from his window when another parent called the police for an unsupervised child. Cue a real legal battle where they could have lost custody of their kid.
Just curious, how old were they?
Would be nice if the article mentions the actual law.
About what changed between the 70s and now regarding letting your kids roam free:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/communi...

https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/04/neighbors-of-free-r...

This also answers your questions about public spaces they can use without you.

It isn't just processed food. Fruits and vegetables are declining in nutritional value as well.
For some context, in the book Omnivores Dilemma, author Michael Pollan states that an orange that our grandparents ate as kids had 5x the nutritional value as an orange today.

Amazing book, everyone should go read it.

The bike everywhere thing requires housing density and infrastructure. And society that won't call CPS on 9-10 years old without supervision.

There are wast suburban areas without public parks and libraries. They are meant for living only, so if you live there, you really need car

On that nutrition comment... it affects nonprocessed foods too.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-aN...