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Comment by nvahalik | Hacker News Reader

Smaller families mean that children don’t participate like they used to. Electronics mean that kids do their own thing.

Family life doesn’t seem as “close” as it once was.

ELectronics is not the problem. Its a symptom of kids not being able to play outside (If streets were filled with kids like they used to in the old days, do you think your child would prefer the ipad?) Kids cant play outside because the outside is filled with 2 tons killer machines i.e cars r/fuckcars r/bancars

> Kids cant play outside because the outside is filled with 2 tons killer machines i.e cars r/fuckcars r/bancars

Kids can't play outside because parents don't allow them to. Single childs were traditionally more protected once they are naturally considered more "precious" and they are slowly becoming the norm. Large family's kids still play outside specially the ones from poor families.

I have friends that bring their computer or ipad to the park and work while the kids play.

Some anecdata: where I live, gypsy and african descent kids play all afternoon (or all day during weekends and school holidays) outside with minor if any parents guidance. Other kids, rarely.

I meant play outside unsupervised like in the old days. Why don't parents allow them outside (unsupervised)? One big reason is due to cars(also due to over-hyped media stories about kidnapping). Think about it, would you let your kids play outside? If you dont have kids, trust me you wouldn't. Not to mention its not even legal anymore, social services get called if they see a 10 year old outside alone (UK where I live)

We raised our kids in a large city in America. Perhaps we just bypassed this trend but we totally let our kids play outside unsupervised. We set boundaries and taught them the necessary skills to do so safely but then we let the go and play. And we lived on a pretty busy street. There are age considerations of course and we had a large family for the time (5 kids) so there was a wide range of ages with the elder kids watching the younger ones.

Maye we are just outliers but I don't think the reason is necessarily cars.

Yes, there's a whole movement around Risky Play and not coddling your kids. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/parenting/risky-play.html

There's a photo I saw recently of a family sitting together on the couch - each person on their iphone. Particularly post-pandemic, it's hard to go backwards and get kids off their devices. I think it is perfectly good for families to set a boundary around this and insist on tech free time together, or just take everyone to the park with no wifi available. We can create the culture that we want in our homes.

Electronics helped in getting the kids outside more. They have more freedom and independence and we can keep track of them and get in touch with them when needed.

We also set their iPhones with a green "Uber" iOS Shortcut button that they can press and it will auto-text us a "Pick me up", along with the address and lat/lng of their location.

We have another red "SOS" button that does the same and triggers a different response.

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