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Comment by shihab | Hacker News Reader

I moved to a mid-seized US city 6 months ago for grad school and I wholeheartedly agree with you.

The bit about hanging out in particular surprised me. I live in such a beautiful neighborhood, yet I almost never see any people outside. People are either walking their dogs or going from their door to car. I never saw a group of child randomly running around, teenagers doing teenager things, or bunch of old people just hanging about- sights I'm so used to. It's even more weird because these people are so friendly when you do get to interact with them.

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How many children live where you live? I think there may be major difference between countries for this, but also, when I lived in an inner ring suburb in the US, there would be kids running all over the neighborhood every day, playing catch across every front lawn on the block, no worries about whose property was what, but then I moved into the city proper I never see them outside of school grounds. But it's pretty easy to deduce why, I have met every person on my block, none has a child older than 3 or younger than 16. I suspect there are lots of interesting patterns emerging if you mapped presence of children house by house in a metro area. Not sure what it would look like, but it feels like it oscillates.

There is a huge decline in birthrates nationwide, so the situation is the same in suburbs. Combined with living much longer than in previous decades, plus a decrease in number of people in each household, it can only mean you see children less frequently relative to non children compared to previous decades.

https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop2.asp

Add on top children staying inside more due to different entertainment options and increase in riskiness of vehicle collisions due to height of vehicles being higher and number of miles driven being much higher, and it all lends to the same phenomenon.

Supposedly, Marshall McLuhan said that North Americans may well be the only people who go outside to be alone and inside to be together. There does seem to be some truth to that, though one should remember that McLuhan was Canadian, and the weather there can limit one's outdoor socializing for much of the year.

I see a fair bit of my neighbors, because I like walking around the neighborhood. Of course, I saw more of them during the pandemic, when I was working from home. It is true that I see less of them in colder weather.

he mentions it in this video https://youtu.be/mq2mcwtyjEA At one minute and 21 seconds, if it gets you any insight like subscribe share and espouse how it’s a wonderful resource for all things to do with McLuhan, thanks

Since you’re in grad school perhaps it’s because you are living in an American college town? Where I spent my pre-college school years we would run around pretty frequently.

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