> Since the 1980s, parents have grown more and more afraid that unsupervised time will expose their kids to physical or emotional harm. In another recent Harris Poll, 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.
> These intuitions don’t even begin to resemble reality. According to Warwick Cairns, the author of How to Live Dangerously, kidnapping in the United States is so rare that a child would have to be outside unsupervised for, on average, 750,000 years before being snatched by a stranger.
I wonder how we ended up in a situation where people think Stranger Danger is this bad. Is it just from TV and the internet inflating the danger to drive views/clicks?
In many areas crime has been trending down but people seem to think things are more dangerous than ever, in general. It baffles me.
The whole stranger danger thing in my view as an adult feels like a downward spiral. It's not like this in many countries.
In the UK it's kind of like - kids don't wander about alone because they might run into baddies, and now adults are afraid to interact with kids because they might be seen as a baddy, and this kind of loops around until no-one is interacting.
Basically, it's like any adult man is seen as a potential child predator, when in reality it's some tiny tiny fraction and in an ideal world we would be able to assume that they get sectioned / locked up quickly so we don't have to worry about it.
Meanwhile I can travel around many parts of Asia, for example, and parents and children alike have no issue interacting with strangers.
> But most of the children in our survey said that they aren’t allowed to be out in public at all without an adult. Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds have gone down a grocery-store aisle alone; more than a quarter aren’t allowed to play unsupervised even in their own front yard.
This is probably a uniquely US problem because after we moved to Europe, we noticed that we see kids without their parents nearby all the time. But, this does not automatically imply that children here spend less time on their phones, we often talk with other parents about it and almost everyone thinks that their kids have too much screen time.
> ...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.
Anyone know when this all changed? At the age of 5 I used to walk to school alone without me or my parents worrying. That would have been about 1958/9.
“What kids told us about how to get off cigarettes”
While I agree there’s a problem with how helicopter-y society is with kids these days, I think it’s ridiculous to expect kids to resist a device that is designed to be addictive. Teams of tens of thousands of the most highly skilled people in the world are laser focused on squeezing every second of attention out of _adults_ let alone kids. We need regulation, full stop. I don’t know what that looks like, but if you’ve ever seen a toddler scrolling TikTok like a zombie you should know what’s at stake.
"always available and will cater to a child’s every whim. But AI will never fulfill children’s deepest desires."
I'm pretty sure it will be able satisfy almost every desire. But I think there's quite a confusion about desire, even deep desire, and deep needs and what's ultimately good for us.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 43.5 ms ] thread> These intuitions don’t even begin to resemble reality. According to Warwick Cairns, the author of How to Live Dangerously, kidnapping in the United States is so rare that a child would have to be outside unsupervised for, on average, 750,000 years before being snatched by a stranger.
I wonder how we ended up in a situation where people think Stranger Danger is this bad. Is it just from TV and the internet inflating the danger to drive views/clicks?
In many areas crime has been trending down but people seem to think things are more dangerous than ever, in general. It baffles me.
Really? Is this just an American thing?
There's nothing specifically 'American' about this.
In the UK it's kind of like - kids don't wander about alone because they might run into baddies, and now adults are afraid to interact with kids because they might be seen as a baddy, and this kind of loops around until no-one is interacting.
Basically, it's like any adult man is seen as a potential child predator, when in reality it's some tiny tiny fraction and in an ideal world we would be able to assume that they get sectioned / locked up quickly so we don't have to worry about it.
Meanwhile I can travel around many parts of Asia, for example, and parents and children alike have no issue interacting with strangers.
This is probably a uniquely US problem because after we moved to Europe, we noticed that we see kids without their parents nearby all the time. But, this does not automatically imply that children here spend less time on their phones, we often talk with other parents about it and almost everyone thinks that their kids have too much screen time.
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.
While I agree there’s a problem with how helicopter-y society is with kids these days, I think it’s ridiculous to expect kids to resist a device that is designed to be addictive. Teams of tens of thousands of the most highly skilled people in the world are laser focused on squeezing every second of attention out of _adults_ let alone kids. We need regulation, full stop. I don’t know what that looks like, but if you’ve ever seen a toddler scrolling TikTok like a zombie you should know what’s at stake.
I'm pretty sure it will be able satisfy almost every desire. But I think there's quite a confusion about desire, even deep desire, and deep needs and what's ultimately good for us.
Capitalism makes the same mistake.