[mtalantikite]

> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted.

During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our bikes to wherever we wanted, and aside from stopping back to eat lunch and dinner, I'd be out until the streetlights went on. I don't recall any major injuries, aside from getting scraped or bumped up from time to time.

[hydrogen7800]

I guess I'm about your age, and I remember doing much of the same. Lots of time on my bike with friends, playing hockey or football in the street, "manhunt" at night around the neighborhood (we were too cool to call it hide-and-seek at that age). But I also remember playing video games indoors, and my mother reminding us about how her mother kicked her out of the house when she was young, and how they were outside until the streetlights came on.

Today, I hear a lot of complaining about kids being inside all the time as opposed to prior generations. However, this is anecdotal and maybe my neighborhood is unique, I always see kids out on bikes with basketballs, fishing rods, etc. We are slowly letting our kid on their bike around the neighborhood with friends, and my big fear is getting hit by a car, especially while in a group and everyone pays less attention.

[cameldrv]

Me too. One thing I noticed in the 2000s was kids being more and more restricted and then they started getting drivers licenses later, living with their parents after college, etc. It felt as if parents thought that when their kid turned 18, that they would magically mature and become independent. Of course this is a process, and you can start it at 7 or you can start it at 18…

On a happy note, we were out eating at a cafeteria type restaurant, but we were sitting outside sort of picnicing about a 3 minute walk away. My son wanted another slice of pizza, but I didn’t really want to go inside and get it for him, so I decided to give him some money and let him get it himself. He came back with the slice of pizza on a plate, on a tray, with the right change and absolutely beaming and he talked about it for days.

[rapind]

This is the real problem. Every house has 2+ cars with one parked on the street, which results in no visibility to avoid kids.

[s_dev]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/north-carolina-child-kil...

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrest...

The US is seeming more bonkers day after day. These sorts of stories just don't make sense to me. We have issues in Ireland with children and teenagers going around engaging in anti-social behaviour but there is a balance to be found between these two extremes.

[mtalantikite]

It's unfortunately very American. Build the entire environment for cars, with very little if any thought for pedestrians, and then put the parents in prison for letting their kids walk a few blocks home, while the driver of the enormous SUV that kills a child has no charges brought against them. We've entirely lost the plot here.

[Ferret7446]

> the driver of the enormous SUV that kills a child has no charges brought against them

I feel this is exaggerated to the point of being outright misinformation. Drivers are by default liable even in cases like jaywalking.

[mtalantikite]

No, I read the article before I posted. The driver was not charged. There are plenty of articles that mention it, but here is from one of the top links on Google:

"The driver was not charged in the case, but both of Legend’s parents, Sameule and Jessica Jenkins, were charged with felony involuntary manslaughter and child neglect."

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/nc-lawmaker-bring-attentio...

[solace_silence]

Unfortunately it's not an exaggeration, here's the article. https://thencbeat.com/legend-jenkins-parents-charged/

[javanissen]

I see a few phenomena here:

1) The US was rebuilt after WW2 to be highly car-centric, with disastrous results for pedestrian safety. It is actually more dangerous for children to move in public because of this automobile centricity in >95% of US spaces, which drives cultural shifts

2) US media is highly sensationalist; Fox News is popular and generally serves to make viewers frightened of the world

3) The US has 340M people to Ireland’s 5.6M people, so from a base rate, we’d expect ~60x more lurid headlines to come out of the US

[uoaei]

I encounter similar sentiments constantly across the internet. One thing we as humans have a lot of trouble with is understanding the scope of experience that isn't commented on in public forums. When we consider comments on the internet to be a representative sample of reality, we get a very warped view of what might happen to us when we step out the door. This paranoia and anxiety is evident in the proliferation of surveillance technologies, etc., and is completely contrary to the obvious decline in crime rates pretty much everywhere.

[gambiting]

At 7 years old my parents would leave for work before I had to go to school, so I had to eat breakfast, dress myself and go to school, locking the door behind me - the walk was across few busy streets which I was told how to cross. Then I would come back before they were home so likewise, I had to let myself in and just wait for them to come back.

I think nowadays if I did that with my son I would have child services called on me.

[83457]

I can't tell if you are advocating for that to still be common. Regardless, I just want to point out the survivor bias in anyone saying this should still be done based on stories like this one. The children in similar circumstances who were killed aren't here to talk about it. (Not trying to be rude)

[gambiting]

My point is that everyone did that, not just me. Likewise no one brought their kids to school by car, you walked or you took public transport.

It's not really survivorship bias when the "survivors" are pretty much everyone.

[insane_dreamer]

Has there been a large drop in child mortality rates or kidnapping rates since we switched to paranoia mode?

I also don’t think this is survivor bias; it’s just the way things generally were back then.

[mitthrowaway2]

Survivor bias is not as powerful an effect as the HN contrarians who always bring it up seem to think. Here's an example of why: Each kid reports not only their own experience, but also those of the people they know. Kids with active social lives grow up knowing 20~100 other kids. The death of a friend is a memorable event. There's no world in which kids were dying a lot from playing outside but we just never hear their perspectives, because in that world, every surviving kid would be talking about their three or four childhood friends who all died from lethal accidents on the playground or crossing the street.

Those things did happen and still do, but they were rare and impactful occurrences that had lasting influence on the lives of the people in the victims' social circles. If anything, each one will have been overrepresented in the self-reported stories of random commenters.

[1659447091]

That story was much more common than ever hearing about anyone in school that got run over crossing a street.

Pearl clutching story incoming.

My elementary school was located on an "island", so you always had to cross a street to get to it walking. We also had a "Safety Patrol" program. 5th graders (10-11 y/o), and soon to be 5th graders, could take a street Safety/rules test and scoring a 100 got you in the program as a "trainee". The trainees would go through a before school program to learn all the things to do to cross a street, plus other walking road rules (when/how etc). We also did things like putting the flag up on the main flag pole and taking it down/folding it each day and some other duties (mostly by sergeants, who were also subs for corner crossing). We had to be at school about 2 hours before it started and ~2 hours after ended.

Once we got through training we were assigned to one of the schools 4 street corners where there was 2-3 other 5th grade safety patrolers (maybe a 4th/5th grade trainee) and a 5th grader lieutenant who was the main one responsible for proper safety on that one corner. As in, our job was to help other kids walking to school cross the street properly, they were to wait until we walked out across the street and escorted them across. Which they did or were reported and got in trouble. There are no adults anywhere at this point except for the occasional drive by check from the adult in charge of the program. The main supervisor was a 5th grader Safety Patrol Captain that made the rounds between the 4 corners making sure all was well.

I ended the year as a lieutenant. There was not a single child run over by a car; seeing a parent that walked their kid to the corner where we picked them up to escort across was a rare sight.

[jeffbee]

Do you think there was widespread death of latchkey kids in the 80s? Get a grip.

[83457]

Don't pretend there weren't problems.

[insane_dreamer]

Of course there were. But has the number of problems greatly reduced?

[throw0101a]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latchkey_kid

[insane_dreamer]

In the 80’s I’d take the train to another (nearby) city to hang out with my friends, no cell phones, or many for pay phones for that matter, this was at age 11-12. No issue, my parents weren’t worried. I did have an accident once on my bike while in another city and someone picked me up off the street, took me to the hospital and called my parents. Was no big deal.

[thefaux]

I had a similar experience and sadly the culture seemed to shift during the 90s so that children were stripped of most of their autonomy. Having not experienced it themselves, many struggle to even imagine the possibilities or benefits.

I will also mention I experienced periods of absolutely crushing boredom at times during the summer when I did not have friends or parents around and had nothing to do but watch daytime television. But I learned from the boredom. It is sad to me that so many today are instead being fed from the drip of constant personalized entertainment that makes it harder to get to the place of complete boredom that ultimately can spark creativity instead of succumbing to learned helplessness.

[Rakshith]

this was probably before your country opened the doors to rapists and violent murderers to come live amongst yall though

[javanissen]

Illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than US citizens and therefore decrease overall crime rates: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG...

[mtalantikite]

I hate to break it to you, but the violent murderers have always been here and they're probably not the people you're thinking of...

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

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porvenir_massacre_(1918)

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

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

etc etc etc

[agent327]

That list is totally not cherry picked to serve a very specific agenda (/s). Actual safety for regular citizens is affected by events that are occurring today (instead of decades ago), as the result of actions by individuals (rather than state-sanctioned violence). As such, the grandparent is 100% correct: letting violent people into your country will raise the overal level of violence that people encounter.

[mtalantikite]

Violent crime by all measures are at generational lows. It's just the truth.

I was being hyperbolic because OP was being ridiculous too. To say "your country opened the doors to rapists and violent murderers" is a very specific right wing scare mongering talking point that is easily debunked by any semi-serious human that can read an x,y plot of the data.

Also, events that are occurring today indeed are interdependent with events of the past [1] -- the crimes of genocide and slavery affect all humans that descend from it [2], and those humans interact with all of us in the here and now. And we are all of course affected by events that are occurring today. Both are true.

It's not that hard to see when you open your mind and look a little deeply. Or in the words of a great sage, "free your mind and your ass will follow". [3]

[1] https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism/interdependence/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zZfbkUkodY

[agent327]

Are there any human tribes around that haven't at one point or another experienced a negative event at the hands of others?

What should we all be given, and more importantly by whom, just to make up for the endless parade of historic injustices? Does dwelling on them for all eternity make for a good future?

[mtalantikite]

Acknowledging is not the same as dwelling. We must acknowledge because it is reality and it is our duty to look reality in it's face. And because it is a reality that others in this present day experience the effects of, it affects all of us.

By acknowledging and understanding the suffering of others, we touch the suffering within ourselves, and vice versa. As my meditation teacher [1] often says in closing, "just as the right hand helps the left without thinking "I'm helping other", when we sincerely take care of others, we take care of ourselves. When we sincerely take care of ourselves, we take care of others".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@ThuptenPhuntsok

[hydrogen7800]

>That list is totally not cherry picked to serve a very specific agenda (/s)

Well yes, it is. It is intended to provide an evidence-based counter to your fabricated claim.

[agent327]

If you'll inspect the names of the posters, you will quickly realize that it was not _my_ claim. I'm also not quite certain how a list of centuries-old atrocities serves as an 'evidence-based counter' to the claim that illegal immigrants in modern America have a high crime rate. If that was indeed fabricated, it could be trivially disproved by posting a link to a current-day statistical database.

Instead he tried his best to make this about race. At best that is whataboutism, and at worst he's just a racist f*ck.

[Jyaif]

Your testimony is quite literally survivor bias.

What would not be survivor bias is you telling us what happened to the kids around you.

[lm28469]

Literally nothing ? because statistically speaking they virtually all survived. And of the ones that did not survive the extreme vast majority didn't die because they were "playing outside"

[cameldrv]

I completely agree. That said when I was a kid there was always a kid in class with a cast or a sling for their collar bone, and these days you hardly ever see it.

[lm28469]

Sure, now half of the class is obese by the time they're 13, I guess it makes it harder for kidnappers too so at least there is some logic

[danaris]

And just what percentage of kids who played outside in the late '80s/early '90s do you think were seriously injured or abducted?

Because whatever you think it is, that's probably much too high. Because it almost never happened. There were a very few highly-publicized cases of children disappearing (eg, JonBenet Ramsey, or in my area Sarah Ann Wood), but a) those were always incredibly rare, and b) such occurrences have been getting steadily rarer for many decades.

[mtalantikite]

> What would not be survivor bias is you telling us what happened to the kids around you.

Oh they all died because adults weren't around.

No but seriously, everyone was fine. Kids died drunk driving in high school, but not playing soccer at the local park.

Edit: I misremembered. The kid I'm thinking of who died drunk driving got into that accident our sophomore year of college. So he would have been around 19 or 20 at the time.

[ARandomerDude]

Guessing you were not a 10-ish year old kid in the early 90s. I had the same experience as the OP and it was very common. I've talked to numerous parents my age who have lamented that we can't let our kids have the same childhood we enjoyed.

[Jyaif]

> Guessing you were not a 10-ish year old kid in the early 90s

As a matter a fact I was. It's not because I pointed out GP's (lack of) logic that I disagree with the conclusion.

[amanaplanacanal]

I grew up the the 60s and 70s, and all the kids lived like this. Stranger danger hadn't been invented yet.

[masfuerte]

It had. In the 1970s my grandmother warned me not to talk to strangers.

More importantly, it didn't stop her sending me shopping when I was four years old.