Growing up in a midwest suburb during the 1980s, not only were we not trapped in our own homes, we were almost never in them at all.
Everybody just biked from place to place and spent like 18 hours a day outside of the house, playing basketball, duplicating cassette tapes and making music in various garages.
I feel it's interesting to see how many here touts bikes as the savior and best way to get around.
The US suburbs are now generally so bike-unfriendly. Big and dangerous cars dominate. Speeds in residential areas are high, so dangerous to play in the streets. The suburbs you grew up in are no longer the same.
What happened? Why did you all stop biking around and got a car instead?
Not sure you've spent time in too many suburbs but traffic tends to be minimal and the ubiquitous nature of kids means most drivers take some reasonable care.
No different than when I was growing up. Don't play in the street unless it's a quiet part (cul-de-sac's are great), or block it off with stuff you can move when cars come by.
I had great memories of living in the suburbs. I would rarely be indoors and had half a dozen friends within a minute or two bike ride. We'd hang out in parks, in front of people's houses, spend our quarters at the store buying snacks, doing kid stuff.
Just how many cars do you think are zipping around in a suburban neighborhood at any given time? The roads in a neighborhood are empty most of the time. I find it rich that people talking up the benefits of riding a bike in a big city would seem concerned about the safety of using a bike in a low density neighborhood.
> Speeds in residential areas are high
What? No they’re not. In any given neighborhood the speed limit usually tops out at 25mph.
The speed limit is of no concern to the parent in a big SUV driving their kids to practice. After all, their own kids are safe inside the car.
And my point is that at some point, kids stopped biking everywhere. But it's the same people that used to bike around as kids now driving them everywhere. Hence my question: What happened?
The rise of structured activities. Now kids don't have free time, they go from school to soccer practice to a math tutor. Gotta have extracurriculars if you want to get into a good school.
What happened to a lot of activities kids used to do? They got replaced by ubiquitous internet-connected devices that allow them to watch any video or play any game at any time. They’d rather do that than play outside, and childhood obesity rates track well with these developments.
To put it another way, the neighborhood I grew up in 30+ years ago still exists, and the roads are the same size, the sidewalks are just as non-existent as they used to be, and there’s no more traffic than there used to be. But as you point out, sure there’s less kids out and about in the neighborhood when I was a kid.
But I would note two things about that. One, when I was a kid, there was much less inside that could occupy my time than there is today. And two, I’d argue that if you’re an adult who has to work all day during the summer, you may not be noticing how many kids are actually playing outside during the day.
I think the devices thing is a bit of a chicken and egg in many ways. I have a 10yo nephew that I see a few times a year, and he uses the iPad and loves playing video games to a very large degree. But if you give him the opportunity to go outside and play with him or other kids, the device play time is pretty much ignored most of the time, and it's definitely not because of rules or structure the parents are setting, the parents have problems putting many restrictions on him due to various issues. He also love sports.
If there were always 30 kids outside in your neighborhood to play with and you didn't need permission or help from the adults in your life, I really bet a lot more kids would be having a lot less screen time.
Kids use the devices because there is not much else they are allowed to do, and playing by yourself or a sibling you are sick of in your back yard gets boring quick for most.
Adults need to create an environment where there is something better, and that is the sad truth for most children.
>> there’s less kids out and about in the neighborhood when I was a kid
I would have to agree with this.
I live in the same neighborhood I skateboarded in 35 years ago. Packs of us roamed the streets. We were all over and we got into all sorts of trouble.
Not only can't I remember the last time I saw a kid skateboarding around here, I can't remember the last time a saw a kid in the neighborhood doing anything outside without an adult present. I know there are still kids around because I get the property tax bill every year that's supposedly paying for schools, but kids don't roam the streets around here no more.
That world is gone. Which is good, because if there was a bunch of kids on skateboards fucking up the handrail on my front steps I would have to go try to run them off like the oldsters tried to do to us circa 1988.
We also now call CAS on parents if their eight year old goes biking on their own. Two generations ago it was okay for a kid of that age to roam several miles on their bike. Now they need parental accompaniment at all times.
US suburbs are more bike friendly than ever. In 1950 the car was the future and they quit building sidewalks in the suburbs. Today in new suburbs people want to see sidewalks so they build them. The roads are no wider today than the 1950s, and the lots are smaller. (in the 1950s people remembered the depression and still demanded large enough a lot for a large garden)
The above is of course a generalization and thus there are exceptions all over. It is still fairly true though.
I'm raising my kids in a subdivision that has a pool, a playground, and several parks close by, this is very standard for the subdivisions around here. My subdivision is full of kids unsupervised riding bikes, playing on the playground, riding scooters. All the subdivision roads have a low speed limit and its very easy to go miles on dedicated bike lanes that aren't just painted lines on a busy road but instead are separate paved areas off the roads. It helps that I live in one of the safest states in the union and that until relatively recently this was a very affordable place to buy a house and have a family.
This exists in a lot of the newer larger metros, places that have seen lots of growth in the last 10-15 years.
My hometown is much more bike friendly now. It wasn't an issue 30 years ago when I was a kid, but now there are major bike/jogging paths cutting through town in a few different directions, bike lanes are wider and clearly marked, sometimes with barriers.
As many of the other posts point out, helicopter parenting happened. Instead of forming a bicycle gang with other kids in the neighborhood and rarely even encountering adults, now kids are dragged to structured activities by their parents. They have to be dragged by their parents because if they were sent on their own, most would find something more fun to do on the way and skip their training lessons. This is orthogonal to whether people live in cities or suburbs.
> Speeds in residential areas are high, so dangerous to play in the streets.
Speeds on trunk roads are ridiculous, but the streets with the actual houses on them are not the nightmare you describe.
That stopped happening in the 90s, where you would get reported to child protective services for letting your under 12yo children play outside by themselves unsupervised if it was outside of your property.
Other parents hear it and it creates a huge chilling effect. As a result, there are no other kids outside to play with, so for the few parents willing to buck the trend, it doesn't matter anyway and helicopter soccer mom has to play chauefer and sign them up for a million structured activities and play dates so the kids don't go nuts inside their houses with not being allowed to do anything.
Everybody just biked from place to place and spent like 18 hours a day outside of the house, playing basketball, duplicating cassette tapes and making music in various garages.