[rkagerer]

I gained a lot of independence and had real unrestricted fun, but in hindsight I might've died a few times.

Yeah, that's called living! I definitely got myself into one or two dangerous situations growing up. I couldn't imagine a childhood where everything is safety railings and padded walls.

[lb1lf]

It's called living, which has become insanely safe compared to what it used to be only a generation or two ago.

Looking at the statistics here in my native Norway, children killed in traffic is down a couple of orders of magnitude since the sixties - while traffic, at the same time, has increased by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Same goes for drowning - drastically reduced rates compared to the sixties.

Of course, I guess one can argue that maybe it has become too safe - in the sense that kids aren't exposed to enough risk to learn how to evaluate it, leading to major crashes with reality later on.

Then again, as a parent, I kind of like the idea that there's never been a safer time to be a child.

That doesn't stop me from urging them to ditch the screen time in favour of heading out into the boonies to find something to do, though.

[paulryanrogers]

Living isn't putting your childhood self or your kids into mortal danger on the regular. There's quite a gap between unsupervised kids doing reckless stuff and knowing putting your kids out into a world not built for adult pedestrians, much less child pedestrians.

My kids still roam, albeit with check-ins, and a lot of training about streets, driveways, and people.

I don't fault parents who reach for trackers or are uncomfortable with letting young kids out of sight. Even back in the day a lot of horrible things happened that weren't reported widely. A family member of mine was nearly abducted off their bike as a teen, if not for a nearby neighbor opening the door when she knocked looking for help.