I assume whoever wrote this is American?
In my country tons of investment goes into spaces for kids to exist in every age group. From playgrounds to youth centres, after school clubs, camps, sports programs. Like i had to help my nephew when he had a breakdown because he couldnt go to all the events he wanted to because theres physically not enough time so some overlap. And most of that stuff is free and a lot of the stuff that isnt has options for low income households and things like the youth centres are specifically target at low income and minority areas.
And also i dont mean to sound like a boomer, but kids can just like play outside, or with toys in their rooms??
What country? I really want to look into what these programs are.
They could well be Bri’ish, and this is in reference to the recent age verification laws passed there.
Why’s there always someone who feels the need to express that the post is not relevant to them? Cool, move along then.
yeah how fucking dare someone bring their alternate worldview into this discussion, dont they know the internet is america
No man, these are great goals for the US. I want to hear about how other countries are doing it well.
A lot of parents want children controlled without agency - making the choices they prescribe. Religious folks are the biggest perpetrators of this trend. Meeting people outside their controlled sphere lessens influence.
Very well said. Parents afraid of losing influence are the fucking downfall of so many great things.
It’s so that the only place they have left is the mines
People are already suggesting this unironically.
Close!
It’ll mostly be farms.
Gotta replace all the deported migrants with somebody, being homeless is a crime, forced labor is a common use of incarcerated criminals in the US.
Minors yearn for the mines.
Minor miners!
I hardly knew em!
Knew him?! He was delicious!
They’re gonna have some access to nature by picking the fruit that are left on the branch.
Tbf the physical places retreated in favor of online spaces. Online is easy, a couple text messages and you’ve got your friends on a server and voice chat. No need to even leave the house. I’ve seen it with my own kids. If the online spaces get cut off we’ll have to go back to physical spaces and they’ll be recreated. Y’know, outside? The kids will be ok if they’re allowed to be kids.
Except police arresting parents for child endangerment over letting their kids outside.
I’m so ready for a graffiti revival
I was browsing around wplace earlier today and thinking that that it’s basically a modern, digitized version of graffiti, and thinking how cool it would be if those kids were all out making reality that beautiful.
And gang revival
There’s also the chemical space.
Telehack still exists for everyone
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Loss of electronic places might actually do some good for them
Nope.
I have so much depression that no one irl ever sypathize with, everyone just blame me for it.
Even randos online are much more sympathetic.
If I tell my mom I wanna kill myself, she’d tell me to hurry up and do it.
If I tell a therapist, they call the fascist pigs to lock me up.
If I tell an acquaintance, they just stop talking to me
Nobody fucking cares, yet they have the audacity do say “mental health awareness”
This world is cruel, let me yell in the void of the internet ffs.
Maintain a diary?
Not if they don’t get the physical ones back either.
True
taken away all of the physical spaces for our children to exist in,
Not sure this is true. I’ve got two young kids and there’s no shortage of things to do. Pools, hiking, every school has a playground. I mean yea they’re not the death traps we grew up with but my kids have a lot of fun and I’m always on the hunt for another school to try them out at. Our city has one of those jungle gym, bowling, arcade combo places we usually go on a rainy day or during the winter.
This is the town I grew up in and pretty much everything I grew up with is still there plus more. You just have to go looking is all.
I’ll contend with the digital world being a step back but I’ve been trying to mostly keep my kids off it as long as possible
Alternatively, my parents had CPS called on them because I went to the grocery store by myself to buy a soda.
- Have rich parents
- Now you have endless activities to do!
Except for the bowling arcade place everything I mentioned is free. The jungle gym place is $25 to get them both in, wouldn’t call that rich territory
Can you get to all that stuff without a car?
You are in a family that has a parent with enough free time to drive kids around, as opposed to both parents having 4.5 jobs/hustles between them?
Cars + insurance + gas now cost as much as houses did 30 years ago.
Also, if you think your kids can just walk or bike or take the bus, go do a websearch for ‘parents arrested for child neglect for letting their kids walk 1/2 a mile home from school’ or something like that.
If you’re not from the US, well then much of this probably isn’t the case, or has viable alternatives.
If you are from the US, uh… yeah all this is valid, you don’t understand how privileged you are.
Some US states/cities are now just getting rid of public school busses.
All that money went to grants for private schools instead.
But you’ll probably still get CPS called on you if your kid(s) is(are) consistently truant.
…
All that being said, raising your kids as off of Roblox, Fortnite, Tiktok as possible… that is a genuienly good thing to do.
They are wretched hives of scum and villainy.
Simply put, not everyone gets do to everything. It sucks but that’s the unfortunate state of life.
The original post is taking about spaces. Locations. Whether or not you have time or a car or whatever has nothing to do with the original post. My point is locations as per the original post do exist and the original post says there are none at all.
This is true, this is fact. Your ability to utilize a space has a lot of factors but the existence of them doesn’t.
Simply put, we think you’re in a bubble. Not everywhere has parks.
I think the biggest difficulty is the change in dynamics for kids being able to be somewhere by themselves. (IE generally speaking if there isn’t a parent near them, you have to worry about CPS taking action), and 2. Biggest thing of “rich parents” these days is, single income that can maintain a household, as just finding the time to go somewhere with the kids is a huge challenge.
Mfw minimum wage
I was at a dying mall recently with a big area that had arcade games and stuff but also bikes and toys. It was perfect. I wish a place like that for all parents. It seemed like if Chuck E Cheese was run by the action park guy but impoverished.
Transport is not free. Time is not free. Distance to ‘free’ infrastructure is inversely proportional to income. Funny, that.
$25 is 3.5hrs of min wage before tax. Check your privilege
every school has a playground.
The elementary school I went to as a kid took the playground out about 5 years ago and has no plans to replace it… The yard also has a fence around it and is locked up when school isn’t in session so they can’t even just run around in the grass outside of recess time.
https://www.parents.com/mom-arrested-for-letting-her-kid-walk-alone-8747874
Unfortunately this didn’t happen too long ago. At that age my friends and I spent all day on our own with no cell phones or any device to let our parents know where we were. A lot of parents that I know are too afraid to let their kids outside by themselves with smart phones or air tags today. I’m not going to say all physical spaces for kids don’t exist anymore, but there do seem to be more limitations than in the past. Of course I’m just speaking of my own experience.
I don’t get the downvotes, or the doomers. You are absolutely right.
There’s plenty of things to do for kids, half of them free. I complied a whole list in an old comment I’m too lazy to find now, but parks are top of the list. Greenery, shade, playgrounds and other kids to play with. Hiking is also free, if you have a bike or a public transport card. Sports centers, libraries, etc, etc. If you want to spend money: zoos, pools, lessons, jump parks, kids cinemas, etc, etc.
If course it’s easier to stay in the basement, complain online and downvote, than to go outside and try things.
Not all towns are like this. In addition, the combo places you describe can be cost-prohibitive, or depending on their rules, kids might not be allowed without a grownup present.
I’m very fortunate where I live that my kids have plenty of options, but there are plenty of places that aren’t like that.
Same here, and we’re lower middle class. Sounds like we’re in the minority from the replies tho.
I’ll contend that there are somewhat fewer places for kids to be kids cost-free - when I was young we had the run of the streets (within reason) and played in a lot of green spaces that are now at least half gone - backfilled with housing/developments. But they’re certainly not gone entirely, and the playgrounds that do exist have better quality equipment, there’s heaps of skate parks (very few when I was a kid), etc.
I think a lot of these replies are by 20-30 year olds with no kids who think that because they don’t see the same places where they hung out as kids mean they don’t exist for some reason.
Sure, malls don’t exist anymore. But a lot of the places you hung out as a kid was the park, spending a few bucks at a coffee shop, parking lots, libraries, hell, just plain-old wandering around sidewalks. The places you hung out at are “not there anymore” because they’re invisible now that you’re an adult.
I think this is it. Lemmy demographics skew a little older, but it probably looks more like reddit than an accurate representation of any population.
I’ve got kids, and there’s so much for them to do. I take them to the park, to local pools, to the arcade at the mall, to fast food play places, and to indoor parks. When the weather is nice our little street has like nine kids outside riding bikes all day.
I’m sure not every area is like this, but I’m also sure that not every area was like this when I was a kid.
You realize unless it’s a specific business or a playground, you will probably have cops called on your kids for being a nuisance or you for “neglect”
