[xkbarkar]

I feel the destructive behaviour of bored kids is forgotten a bit. Growing up in the late 70s early 80s we were kicked out of the house until dinner. We did a lot of really dangerous things exploring. Among these,

-Playing in storm drains. Inside the narrow tunnels I might add.

-Abandoned construction sites.

-Railway tracks. Putting things o the rails waiting for the train to see what happened. Everything from rocks to toys to coins.

-Dumpster diving in large dumpsters. There was a soap factory near us and wed dive for schampoo or hairgel.

-Jumping in the biohazard pond looking for frogs eggs.

-Throwing things off bridges.

-Climbing various constructions, houses and dubios trees.

-Competing in who could jump from the highest roof.

Kids not only could get hurt. We did. Legs were broken. No one died fortunately.

Bored kids outside is not really as romantic as many would have it. Not arguing against boredom, constant stimuli is not healthy.

That being said, unsupervised bored kids can lead to some very dangerous outcomes.

[thefz]

Yet over these experiences you socialized, bonded, explored, got scared, risked and got away with it, promised not to tell parents, had general fun and discovered things you would have not otherwise. Any of these beats becoming a rotbrain in front of YouTube kids for hours.

[medvezhenok]

We’re also looking at strong survivor bias. My grandfather played in the fields after WW2 (Eastern Europe) and had friends who died or had limbs blown off by undetonated mines from the war (preschool/school age). You likely never heard their stories since they didn’t make it to present day.

There are definitely many benefits to socialization outside, but let’s not forget the tradeoffs. Mental health can be repaired (I.e. ozempic for the mind?), permanent injuries - much less so.

(I picked an extreme example to prove a point, I’m not suggesting the risks of playing outside today are equivalent. But the risks are real nonetheless)

[thefz]

There is no pill for a sheltered existence

[ThrowawayTestr]

What about the rest of the world where there aren't land mines?

[ZhongXina]

> the risks of playing outside today are equivalent

In Ukraine they are / will be for many years.

[10u152]

What? I think the point here is not that minefields don't exist it's that there's a huge jump from wanting kids to play outside to having them play in a minefield. There's plenty of Ukraine left that ISN'T a minefield.

[ryandrake]

> Any of these beats becoming a rotbrain in front of YouTube kids for hours.

Technically, the jury is still out on this. I don't think anyone's done any kind of study of how childhood YouTube brainrot affects their long term outlook during adulthood, simply because YouTube brainrot is too new. For what it's worth, if I had to bet money, I'd agree with you that "socialized, bonded, explored, etc." is better than YouTube, but I don't think this has been proven yet. It's just a gut feeling.

[simonh]

Children growing up in pampered, protected, desocialised environments isn’t a new phenomenon never before seen in history though.

[golergka]

How many of these experiences included bullying, fighting and abusing each other? Kids are not kind.

[vijucat]

I used to chase kites barefoot as a kid in India. I swear there was a time when I detected, while running with my eyes towards the sky, that I am stepping over a large piece of broken glass, like a fragment of a bottle of Coke, and I instinctively twisted my ankle so that instead of putting pressure on it, my foot and the bottle would just roll sideways. I just regained my posture, stepped hard to the side, unscathed, and continued running after the kite. There was not even a scratch on my foot. I still think about that incident. Maybe it was because I was so thin and lightweight that I managed to escape uninjured? What if it went horribly wrong and resulted in permanent nerve damage?

IMHO, a lot of these analyses suffer from survivorship bias; the ones who died don't get to tell you it was a bad idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[mihaaly]

You genuinely discovered an other aspect of personality development in childhood, risky play: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/why-children-need-risk-fear-and...

[snapplebobapple]

I would argue that what you were doing was actually good though because you were going maximum risk in an environment that was definitely dangerous but not to the level of adult life. When you got hurt it informed your learning brain and you likely adjusted your risk taking going forward. I see this skill missing a lot in the kids that grew up in the 2000's and later vs the early millenials/gen x. It's way better to learn your risk limits in an environment where the probability of permanent harm or death still exists but is actually a lot lower than doing adult things like driving a car. The way I usually describe this is a lot of the younger people I talk to weren't punched in the face enough by their peers growing up because that's the other social risk side of this equation.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

> The way I usually describe this is a lot of the younger people I talk to weren't punched in the face enough by their peers growing up because that's the other social risk side of this equation.

You forgot school shooters exist.

[Khelavaster]

Exactly. Punching someone in the face in high school is a good way to get shot, stabbed, poisoned, or run over.

[defrost]

HN excels in American exceptionalism.

Large portions of globe functions with fights at school that don't escalate to death or injury with a weapon.

[snapplebobapple]

My problem with current fights in canada, where school shooters exist but are rare, is they seem largely gang related (read business related) which doesnt have a chance of providing the right lesson because the lesson from a business fight is the same lesson from bullying fights: come back with a bigger weapon to right this injustice. The lesson we are looking for requires the kid know the social norms roughly and be in a testing situation that crosses the line, is corrected with a mild amount of violence from the other kid but leaves the situation such that they could repair the friendship in the future with the right words and realizations. This happened at least five times in my youth and atleast two escalated to a bit of violence and it was informative. I dont see it happening at all in my kids or my neices and nephews youths and that c(ncerns me a bit.

[defrost]

I'm 60+, Australian, and (eventually) went to a high school with a lot of physicality, mixed groups, and seething undercurrents - a mining town with global migrant workers on traditional indigenous land.

We had fights, they could be brutal, the social mechanics allowed a needle to be threaded which myself and a number of others largely managed to do; stand your ground, don't engage physically, don't run .. if someone calls you out and starts smack talking, don't rise, just reply and confound. If they take a swing dodge it and don't respond, if it lands, suck it up and don't respond - in the rung climbing of high school and elsewhere this makes the other look a fool.

There were lessons learned from that and I can still my grandchildren benefitting from phyical encounters (not just fights, engagement with big waves, steep hills, solid animals, bicycles and motorbikes) that can hurt but largely don't kill them.

[lm28469]

Boys will be boys, we all did these things back then and the extreme vast majority of us survived, I'll take that over 10 hours of screens per day from age 3

[EasyMark]

My band of miscreants had two female members, let’s not assume that only boys run around in mini-not-so-evil gangs.

[billti]

I shudder to think of my kids doing the stuff I did as a kid, and sometimes wonder what angel was looking over me that I made it to adulthood.

I don’t worry at all about my 8yo boy however, as he’s very cautious and risk averse. My 6yo girl though already scares me to death with the stuff she does when she slips out of sight. I can’t wait for the teenage years! <sarcasm>

[Milvaedd_]

When I was a 6 years old girl I found a rusty machete in a forest I was not supposed to be in. I managed to find my way back to the group of adults frantically looking for me in the parking lot nearby, realized they were looking for me, and decided I did not want to get angry/panicked adults all over me. So I discreetely went back in the forest to build stuff with my new machete. Adults soon found me running down a forest hill full of dead wood and poison ivy; while holding a rusty machete. I panicked when my mom yelled at me so I tried to escape by JUMPING down the slope with the machete in my hand, before deciding to keep running away through the creek that cushioned my fall - because now that I was covered in mud and water I figured they would kill me.

During all of this ordeal, I thought the issue was that I went in the forest and got dirty. The "disappeared for a long time" and the "holding and using a rusty machete" did not register as issues.

Goold luck with your daughter, it did not become better for my parents until I was...Until they stopped knowing what I did. And just as you they were unprepared because my older brother is mostly into being alive and safe.

[seoulmetro]

No one assumed that.

[6r17]

My IT school changed since I was there. Talking to my old director he told me about the power of the environment. The premise is that we had a smaller school before, and it was not optimally planned, (student's cables running around, trash not exactly at disposal nearby, etc...)

It seems obvious there is a direct link between environment and behavior, but what he started doing was like "programming the environment" in order to trigger behavior changes.

Why would we litter if the trashcan is nearby ? Why would we go out of our way with cables if power-socket is on every table ?

The same way I wonder if we cannot "program" the environment for kids, in a way that allows us to let them get bored out, but in such a situation that is not dangerous but also productively interesting for the kids.

It is not the same to get bored out outside nearby a train track or in the industrial area, than in a somewhat controlled area ?

What do we want to expose them to ? We already know it might want to try crazy stuff ; but I guess we can reduce the danger factors and increase area for more interesting activities ? Also, this is all linked to age and I'm not sure we can make generic rules.

Growing up in a farm is much different than growing up in the streets, and ultimately, my parents and I think a lot of parents, decide to live where kids are safe to grow with somewhat nice activities and people around them.

(Note that I also met a couple that completely cut themselves from the world and they really had to come back to society when the kid came to age, just because a kid requires social interactions with people it's age)

[m_fayer]

Some of those things are terrible and dangerous to others. But parents need to be so much more measured in their responses.

Yes, you find out your kid was throwing stuff off bridges or being a vile bully, you come down like a pile of bricks.

But that doesn’t mean a full safety-rail environment. That means kids will jump off high places and break into others and we slap them on the wrist and carry on. That means lots of broken bones and the very occasional tragedy. Because a whole generation prone to mental illness and incapable of autonomy is infinitely worse. I think we’ve learned that by now.

[EasyMark]

It’s part of life. Helicoptering your kids is as bad as letting them run around after midnight with “the wrong types”. There’s a middle ground. We have swung too far into safety. It’s fine to push your kid to find a hobby or interest but a kid with half hour to half hour schedule every day is going to be miserable. They aren’t small adults. I’ve seen too many young adults with low self esteem, overthinking and afraid to socialize, waiting on texts or emails for hours or days for an answer instead of knowing their value and just calling after giving a reasonable response time; or simple saying “well f that, I’ll call somebody else”

[kvetching]

This is literally my childhood / teenage years, and I was born in the 90s. Seems like everything changed when our dopamine systems were highjacked by handheld screens. Started to see the first glimpses of this, everyone crowding around my IPod in shop class to watch a crazy Aphex Twin music video I put on it, or even watching a movie on the Ipod, hooked up to my car speakers with my gf sitting in the school parking lot

[nottorp]

Yep, and this attitude led to what's called today "helicopter parenting" I believe.

[robocat]

It's easy to recall the dangers.

But harder to list the benefits learnt, because they are often subconcious.

[alfiedotwtf]

Bingo!

Even into my 30s I used to wake up in a panic remembering all the situations where I’ve almost died because I was just a little bored.

It sounds like the nostalgia in the comments here are akin to “I was poor, so you’re going to know what it’s like being poor too”.

[ddmf]

Reminds me of finding a portapotty and using it to tumble down a hill, or visiting the local quarry when I was 8 and playing around near huge deep pools of strangely coloured liquids. Mid 80s were like the wild wild west.

[felipemnoa]

Or flying a kite during a storm and joking about getting hit by lighting. That definitely would have won us the Darwin award that year.

[SebFender]

hahaha so true!

[cutemonster]

> Putting things on the rails waiting for the train to see what happened. Everything from rocks [...]

What happened / happens? I've always wondered.

I guess the rock gets crushed?

What about trams, where the rails are instead submerged in a "crack" in the ground?

We did dumpster diving too and playing with fire :-)

[wizardforhire]

Somewhat related

https://youtu.be/agznZBiK_Bs?si=iax3oQ67Wn-_umpk

[cutemonster]

Thanks! Amazing that the trains are that hard to derail, and that's back in the 1940's

[raxxorraxor]

A lot better than the 24/7 surveillance some kids are subjected to. Of course some parenting is needed to keep things in check to some degree.

Easier said than done if it is your kids taking risks, but kids and parents need room to learn and grow.

[interludead]

And acually boredom can allow children to become more self-reliant!

[coldtea]

Most of the things you describe are part of a good childhood and learning boundaries and limits, and testing yourself, and growing harder, and having fun.

Sorry, but we had been living like that for ages before helicopter parents became the norm. Kids didn't die in the streets by the truckload, or jump off of roofs to their doom any any number to statistically matter, as this alarmist comment implies.

[watwut]

Kids mortality used to be much higher then it is now.

[coldtea]

For totally different reasons. We're not talking about street urchins in Victorian era or pre-modern medicine child mortality.

[watwut]

The deadly accidents were a thing the way they basically are not a thing now.

[argiopetech]

Yet, accidents are still the leading cause of death for children 0-14 years of age.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/child-health.htm

[coldtea]

You can't die if you're already not living

[Zambyte]

Kids mental health used to be much better than it is now.

[ricketyricky]

Ehem - sounds like a normal childhood?

Compare that to the sheltered, all-wishes-granted and no minute spent w/o distractions like social media, kids. Started with Gen Z who get all angsty, with panic attacks, when they have to start performing, i.e., during final exams and the like. And never learned to deal with emotions and free-floating thoughts, handling themself, keeping calm.

(all observed from multiple coworkers being parents, some had to bring their offspring to psychiatric therapy - of course, driven, as taking public transport on their own would be too much!)

Due to our normal childhood, we could handle situations later in life where today's offspring inevitably fails.

[keybored]

This follows the for-me-not-for-thee principle:

- The parent who grew up in the <more rugged years> self-identify as a tough rugrat who had fun and was fearless; not a wuzz like those modern kids (“kids” here excludes their own)

- But the parent would rather that their kids be safe than to have to pain themselves worrying about them constantly

[JackMorgan]

Perhaps the modern parent must learn the difficult task of slowly trusting the unsupervised child the same way the unsupervised child must learn to trust themselves.

This seems a difficult ask, but it's possible and probably very healthy for all involved.

[watwut]

Quite a few of these are what you want others to be sheltered from. Like, rocks thrown on passing cars from the bridge.

Youth criminality, alcoholism rates, teenage pregnancies are down and that is a good thing.

[thebruce87m]

> all observed

Reminds me of the Mark Twain quote:

> When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

I wonder what the equivalent is for knowing how to be the perfect parent until becoming one yourself.

[dchftcs]

You can learn to take good risks and handle hardship without taking stupid unnecessary risks. One important life lesson is that the only risks worth taking are those that offer corresponding upside - else the expected outcome is ruin. Education wise this means you give them necessary or low-impact risks to take - and let them endure outcomes such as failing a difficult but important project, failing to find love, losing a basketball match, or losing friendships. Of course, sometimes you may need to do something even if there is no upside for yourself directly, but that is outside the scope of this topic.

[BobbyJo]

> You can learn to take good risks and handle hardship without taking stupid unnecessary risks.

How do you know what risks are stupid and unnecessary?

Kids spent a lot of time outside getting hurt for almost all of human history, and "ruin" wasn't something anyone worried about.

[watwut]

Yes 5 years old used to herd gooses unsupervised. Relatedly, deadly accidents of kids were much more frequent.

[BobbyJo]

We obviously aren't going to achieve 0 unless we lock every kid on earth up in a padded room, which we aren't doing, so "more" or "less" is fine if the reward is worth the risk. Which is exactly the discussion being had right now.

[watwut]

I am not saying current US tradeoff is necessary ideal. But, when people argue by "human history" they should not ignore what actually happened during that history. Because as of now, kids ARE better off then they generally were for majority of human history.

The gooses thing was memory of my grandmother. It is not some kind of distant medieval history, it was the norm around WWII.

[VMG]

Kids survival was actually pretty poor for most of human history. Probably why the families were much larger

[raxxorraxor]

Yes, but that was less because of accidents and more about malnutrition or other health problems.

[medvezhenok]

It was actually both. The accident rate was significantly higher, it was just dwarfed by the other health problems so it didn’t seem so bad in comparison

[inthebin]

I think the problem you're describing is not due to distractions and social media. I think the fault there is that school has changed, kids aren't taught to be allowed to make mistakes. If you're not taught that failure is part of learning, then you're just teaching kids to build anxiety because they are not allowed to fail.