If some "concerned citizen" doesn't report the 12 year old to child protective services. Looking at how children are pushed into so much fear it is no wonder how many of them escape into the virtual.
That sounds more to me like a thing that happens in the suburbs, where kids need to be chauffeured around in cars everywhere and the streets are too fast and too packed with cars for bikes to be safe, so parents don't even get the opportunity to contemplate letting their kids out of their sight.
https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/national-international/M...
> Skenazy's April 1, 2008 column in The New York Sun, "Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone," described her making the controversial decision to let her son take the New York City Subway home alone, which was completed without incident.