[d_sem]

I think the primary issue is that there is massive demand for adolescent social interaction in a world that is increasingly physically isolating for kids.

Demographic shifts make suburban families too sparse to support children friend groups. Denser cities are increasingly financially impossible for families to move in.

[whyenot]

I suspect that helicopter parenting is a much larger contributor than physical isolation. We have had sparse suburbs in the US since at least the 1950s, and generations of kids grew up in that environment and did just fine.

[bongodongobob]

It's definitely this. I live in one of the safest cities in the country, in the Midwest. The other day on some local Facebook group, I saw a mom trying to find someone to pick up her kids from middle school and elementary school every day. It was a 10 and 5 minute walk respectively that EVERYONE in that neighborhood took 30 years ago. No busy streets, nothing. Sidewalks and everything. Absolutely insane.

[Libidinalecon]

I also live in an incredibly safe area and had a friend from outside the US say it is like a horror movie after walking around a few times on a beautiful summer night when they visited.

Perfect summer night and there is not a person to be seen. They felt like they were walking around in some kind of zombie horror movie that all the people had vanished.

[nitwit005]

It's hard to tell. You have to wait a generation or two to see the long term effects, as people will still have their earlier social habits.

It feels as though people slowly learned that they could get away with not introducing themselves to their neighbors, invite them over for dinner, and other activities that were once assumed.

[pixl97]

1950s was the baby boom so is not a great example. Children per adult has been falling ever since and suburban areas growing.

[whyenot]

I wrote starting in the 1950s. It was certainly true for other generations like gen X (me) and also for older millennials.

[syntaxing]

Ehh, I grew up in the suburbs in the 90s. We were fine. I would hang out with the neighborhood kids unsupervised all day long even when I was single digits old. The issue is with American culture and how it shifted into a low trust society.

[jaredklewis]

I think the parent is saying what you had is now not possible, because the neighbors don’t have kids. I’m in the burbs. Nearest kid is 4 door downs. Nearest kid the same age as my kid is two blocks over. Most people are 60+.

Anecdata but I think this is what the parent comment is asserting anyway.

[darth_avocado]

Yeah, homeownership within young families is ridiculously out of reach, which makes “young suburbs” a difficult thing to maintain. Anecdotally, we are a young family and there’s very few other ones in the neighborhood that are in the similar boat as us.

As compared to what I heard from the older neighbors, when they had kids, all the others around also had kids. So many in fact that all the neighbors had doors in their backyards that opened into all the other neighbors yards, so the kids would just run around without having to go into the streets.