[KaiserPro]

Where I am in the UK its the "problem" kids that are seen out and about on their own.

I was freerange growing up in rural england, so I have no problem with the youth roving about. My wife is horrified by the idea, so our kids are somewhat coddled.

In the UK at least, children are objectively safer in every metric apart from getting fat. Kidnap, abuse, getting lost, car accidents are all way way down.

The interesting thing is that here you wouldn't be threatened with child services, You'd have to be pretty abusive or get your kid picked up by the police for the state to get involved. Mostly its pure classism, nice middle class kids aren't allowed to walk about on their own until they are 16, at least.

[left-struck]

I think mentioning those safety metrics is really important because for any person, not just in the UK but in many countries like it, the thing that will most likely kill them are diseases related to being unfit and overweight.

So while kids might appear to be slightly safer in their childhood, the reality is that those other dangers were never a serious statistical danger to begin with, but not creating health habits is a contributing factor to the most likely cause of death when they’re older.

I think people vastly underestimate how dangerous living an inactive lifestyle is. I’m not saying this because I grew up super active and now I’m judging people who live their life differently to me, I’m saying it because those are the statistics, and because I DIDN’T grow up being active.

[KaiserPro]

I definitely agree that child inactivity is something that is really bad in multiple ways.

Deaths from inactivity are going to show up in 40s and 50s after long and expensive periods of medical treatment. THats a problem because we are only really going to see significant issues around about now. But that trend of inactivity isn't equally distributed over time.