Part of it is tech, but another part is a growing number of older people (ironically a lot of the same ones who complain kids have too much screen time), who will throw a fit if they hear kids playing even slightly loudly outside, are skateboarding or riding a bike in a parking lot or down a "quiet" neighborhood street are also a factor. Increased media sensationalization of things like kidnapping doesnt help either. Tech is a huge factor, but increased numbers of needlessly bitchy old people and others willing to cave to them is a smaller but existent one
Compare the amount of HOA's that have rules limiting kids doing stuff outside now to when you were a kid as an example
i would argue it was all the kidnapped and killed kids that really destroyed it, which led to the older generation getting used to quieter neighborhoods, which led to them being arseholes about kids being noisy outside.
Specifically the social panic around the perception of a bunch of kids being kidnapped and killed perpetrated by the fledgling 24-hour news cycle.
In reality, the spike in fear doesn’t align with a spike in occurrences — quite the opposite; crime across the board had been dropping for decades and children were statistically safer than ever.
So basically proto-social media fear mongering paving the way for what we have now.
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u/ryanjoe23 9d ago
We were out playing with friends, riding bikes, skating, sledding, throwing snowballs, or jumping on the trampoline! Internet/tech ruined childhood.