What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/kids-smartphones-play-freedom/683742/

by jc_811 • 11 months ago

57 104 11 months ago

khangaroo• 11 months ago

kevingadd• 11 months ago

Since the 1980s, parents have grown more and more afraid that unsupervised time will expose their kids to physical or emotional harm. In another recent Harris Poll, we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted.
These intuitions don’t even begin to resemble reality. According to Warwick Cairns, the author of How to Live Dangerously, kidnapping in the United States is so rare that a child would have to be outside unsupervised for, on average, 750,000 years before being snatched by a stranger.

I wonder how we ended up in a situation where people think Stranger Danger is this bad. Is it just from TV and the internet inflating the danger to drive views/clicks?

In many areas crime has been trending down but people seem to think things are more dangerous than ever, in general. It baffles me.

jeffbee5• 11 months ago

I don't get it either, especially because I don't know any parents who act like this. All the kids in my neighborhood just roam around, including mine.

I wonder if this is another coastal/inland, liberal/conservative rift where the conservatives are for some reason afraid of everything.

erikerikson• 11 months ago

Our experience of Seattle, conservative hotbed that it is, is that everything is as described in the article. We've been discussing moving somewhere else for this exact reason. Doesn't matter if we would let our kid out if there's no one to play with.

dcow2• 11 months ago

Over parenting and hyper-paranoia are liberal traits in my experience.

bandofthehawk• 11 months ago

I think it might be less about left/right and more about suburban and car culture vs. urban or rural. People living in the suburbs tend to drive everywhere anyway and perceive things outside of the car as dangerous.

bpt3• 11 months ago

Reporting from the conservative stronghold of the inner DC suburbs, kids are generally not allowed to wander unsupervised until they are in high school.

In my experience, kids have very little unscheduled/unsupervised time in more liberal areas, but I think that has little to nothing to do with political leanings and much more to do with parental expectations and availability of disposable income and leisure time.

Maybe you should try viewing things outside of a political lens, especially one where the other side is unexplainably but unquestionably wrong by default, and see how things look.

jader201• 11 months ago

In many areas crime has been trending down but people seem to think things are more dangerous than ever, in general.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, or that I disagree that Stranger Danger is overblown.

But is it possible that part of the reason crime is down is because of Stranger Danger?

I’m not suggesting it is, just that I can’t say with certainty that it isn’t.

ceedan• 11 months ago

But is it possible that part of the reason crime is down is because of Stranger Danger?

Yes. This is a really soft question. Sure, part of the reason that crime is down could possibly be due to stranger danger.

On the flip side, over-parenting has negative consequences on kids who have no freedom. I believe the same poll had said that most kids had never walked down a grocery store aisle by themselves and weren't allowed to play outside in front of their house w/o a parent.

bryanlarsen4• 11 months ago

Yes, that is a good question. It is generally answered in longer form treatments, like Skenazy's "Free Range Kids" book.

The answer is that the rate of crime on kids committed outside by strangers is down, even after you adjust for less time outside.

amanaplanacanal4• 11 months ago

Children are much more likely to be sexually assaulted by family members and trusted friends than strangers. We don't like to think about that though, so we redirect our fears to stranger danger.

busterarm2• 11 months ago

I'm a child of the 80s and was a pretty independent kid from an early age growing up in NYC. I spent a lot of time in the city's libraries, arcades, etc. I went to and from school (and generally started navigating Manhattan) on my own starting in first grade.

From the time I was 6 until I turned about 14, pedophiles were all over me like flies on shit. They would follow me home from the library. They would come up behind me at Playland Arcade (in Times Square) and grope me or masturbate. I would just freeze and let this happen -- I had to be taught by someone to physically fight them off.

I think we both overestimate and underestimate the risk. Not intending to victim blame, but predators of a certain type tend to all find the same people to victimize. If you're the type of person that gets targeted, then this is a serious problem to worry about.

techdmn• 11 months ago

I've heard a few things on this. One is that there were a few high profile but very bad cases in the 80s, kids getting kidnapped and trafficked with law enforcement not really willing to even look into it. The odds are infinitesimal, but the cost of the negative outcome is very, very high. Second is kids getting run over by cars. Comparatively that happens all the time. Third is a general breakdown of social connection with people in your neighborhood.

dcow2• 11 months ago

Do kids really get hit by cars at a level that would materially impact the “let them play in the park” calculus?

mingus88• 11 months ago

Adam Walsh was 7yo and abducted from a Sears. His parents left him to play Atari while they shopped.

They made a movie about it in 1983. Politicians introduced new laws around it.

His father John Walsh went on to host Americas Most Wanted on TV for 24 seasons. Prime time TV whipped up a culture of fear for that entire generation.

Kids growing up with that culture are parents now. Not surprised to see these results.

amtamt• 11 months ago

United States is so rare that a child would have to be outside unsupervised for, on average, 750,000 years before being snatched by a stranger.

Is this stat from 1980s or recent? If recent, what may be the likelihood that such stats are the outcome of parents' paranoia?

lm284694• 11 months ago

There are 300 kid abductions per year in the US, more or less the same amount of people who got struck by lightning or the same about of kids who drown in swimming pool. I don't see any hysteria around two of these topics though

dr_dshiv2• 11 months ago

My son recently had to get rabies shots. Well, that was the recommendation because there was a bat in the sleeping quarters of his camp. The probability that the bat had rabies is vanishingly small. Just like the probability that the bat bit him with no marks.

But, you read about rabies (no cure, horrible death), and even if it is a 1-10 million chance and you can do something about it — well, he got the shot (over my protest!).

I think this is similar — child abducted and god knows what happens to them? And it’s your fault as a parent for not supervising? Even a 1-in-10 million chance seems like too much.

It’s not rational, but I think that’s the psychology. It is countered by mentioning the side effects of the vaccine —in this case, identifying the potential harms of over-supervision.

danaris2• 11 months ago

Getting a rabies shot is a much less onerous protective measure than preventing kids from playing unsupervised for their entire childhoods.

jgwil22• 11 months ago

The probability that the bat had rabies is vanishingly small.

Not really, it's something like 5%. Usually if the bat can be captured and tested for rabies you can wait to get the vaccine, but if the bat couldn't be caught, it makes sense to vaccinate just in case.

I don't understand why you would want to take a chance on rabies. What are the side effects of the vaccine that are so harmful?

mhuffman2• 11 months ago

I get a similar response when talking with other parents about allowing phones in school. We know that there are 130k+ schools in the US, and that a school shooting is statistically very, very small, however they still want to have a way for their children to contact them (or for them to contact their kids) if this happens. The mothers, in particular, all agree on this in my circle.

hombre_fatal• 11 months ago

I reckon there's also a feedback loop where places have fewer kids running around for these reasons so you don't want to be among the first to release your kids there especially as a new parent.

Compared to moving in to a place that already has kids running around doing things.

kasperni• 11 months ago

Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds have gone down a grocery-store aisle alone;

Really? Is this just an American thing?

richardlblair• 11 months ago

Can't speak for others, but my 3yr old has definitely gone done an aisle alone. Much to my dismay, but alas, it did happen. These are the things that happen when you don't put your kid in carts and strollers all the time.

It also has the added benefit that he interacts with a lot of strangers while we're about 10ft away. It's good for him to learn that people are usually good.

x187463• 11 months ago

Worth considering how car-centric America is. An 8-year-old is unlikely to have access to a grocery store to which they can independently travel. Once they're at the store with a parent, they'll just travel the aisles together. It's not as though many young children have the funds to make purchasing decisions, anyway.

bryanlarsen4• 11 months ago

Note that they're talking about an aisle alone, not about going to the grocery store alone. My kids were older than 8 the first time they walked to the grocery store by themselves, but I'm confident that I told them "you go grab the peanut butter you like" while I was grabbing something in a different aisle when they were around kindergarten age.

jeltz• 11 months ago

Maybe not just but in Sweden that is not normal. There are a few crazy helicopter parents like that but not 50%.

28304283409234• 11 months ago

That’s why we’re so glad that groups around the country are experimenting with ways to rebuild American childhood ...

There's nothing specifically 'American' about this.

jgwil22• 11 months ago

The degree to which childhood independence has been curbed appears to be more extreme in the United States than in other countries.

throwaway22032• 11 months ago

The whole stranger danger thing in my view as an adult feels like a downward spiral. It's not like this in many countries.

In the UK it's kind of like - kids don't wander about alone because they might run into baddies, and now adults are afraid to interact with kids because they might be seen as a baddy, and this kind of loops around until no-one is interacting.

Basically, it's like any adult man is seen as a potential child predator, when in reality it's some tiny tiny fraction and in an ideal world we would be able to assume that they get sectioned / locked up quickly so we don't have to worry about it.

Meanwhile I can travel around many parts of Asia, for example, and parents and children alike have no issue interacting with strangers.

closewith2• 11 months ago

In the UK, about 5% of children have been sexually abused. Nobody wants to risk that happening to their children and it's mostly perpetrated by people known to the children, so trust is understandably at an all time low.

gjadi• 11 months ago

But since it's mostly by people close to the children, the fear of the stranger is not justified.

akudha• 11 months ago

now adults are afraid to interact with kids because they might be seen as a baddy

This only applies to men though, as if all men are predators by default. There are cases where a single adult man was refused entry into a park, mom calling the cops on a single adult man in a park who was minding his own business etc. As you pointed out, this doesn't seem like an issue in Asia, at least not yet.

No wonder men do not want to become teachers. Why risk your freedom, reputation?

I'd blame the media (especially right wing media) whose entire business model is fear mongering about everything/everyone

mattmanser• 11 months ago

Unfortunately it's not a tiny, tiny fraction. I thought this too once then looked up the stats.

It's horrifying when you find out. It's 1 in 20 children get sexually abused in the UK at the moment for example, and we have loads of checks and safe guards.

And waiting until they get sectioned/locked up, that means someone else has to suffer potentially life-long trauma.

amanaplanacanal4• 11 months ago

That sexual abuse is overwhelmingly from family and trusted family friends, not from strangers.

assimpleaspossi• 11 months ago

I was at a gathering of distant relatives I had never met before. I struck up a conversation with the 15-year old daughter of a cousin whose aunt came running on up with a stern look on her face that made me feel like she thought I was a child molester.

That this was a family gathering I was invited to for honoring my close relative who passed away just made me very sad.

kleiba• 11 months ago

But most of the children in our survey said that they aren’t allowed to be out in public at all without an adult. Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds have gone down a grocery-store aisle alone; more than a quarter aren’t allowed to play unsupervised even in their own front yard.

This is probably a uniquely US problem because after we moved to Europe, we noticed that we see kids without their parents nearby all the time. But, this does not automatically imply that children here spend less time on their phones, we often talk with other parents about it and almost everyone thinks that their kids have too much screen time.

zelphirkalt• 11 months ago

And that is probably a symptom of pedestrian friendly city design, compared to car centric design.

mtalantikite7• 11 months ago

...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted.

During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our bikes to wherever we wanted, and aside from stopping back to eat lunch and dinner, I'd be out until the streetlights went on. I don't recall any major injuries, aside from getting scraped or bumped up from time to time.

gambiting2• 11 months ago

At 7 years old my parents would leave for work before I had to go to school, so I had to eat breakfast, dress myself and go to school, locking the door behind me - the walk was across few busy streets which I was told how to cross. Then I would come back before they were home so likewise, I had to let myself in and just wait for them to come back.

I think nowadays if I did that with my son I would have child services called on me.

throw0101a• 11 months ago

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latchkey_kid

834572• 11 months ago

I can't tell if you are advocating for that to still be common. Regardless, I just want to point out the survivor bias in anyone saying this should still be done based on stories like this one. The children in similar circumstances who were killed aren't here to talk about it. (Not trying to be rude)

Jyaif2• 11 months ago

Your testimony is quite literally survivor bias.

What would not be survivor bias is you telling us what happened to the kids around you.

mtalantikite7• 11 months ago

What would not be survivor bias is you telling us what happened to the kids around you.

Oh they all died because adults weren't around.

No but seriously, everyone was fine. Kids died drunk driving in high school, but not playing soccer at the local park.

Edit: I misremembered. The kid I'm thinking of who died drunk driving got into that accident our sophomore year of college. So he would have been around 19 or 20 at the time.

amanaplanacanal4• 11 months ago

I grew up the the 60s and 70s, and all the kids lived like this. Stranger danger hadn't been invented yet.

ARandomerDude• 11 months ago

Guessing you were not a 10-ish year old kid in the early 90s. I had the same experience as the OP and it was very common. I've talked to numerous parents my age who have lamented that we can't let our kids have the same childhood we enjoyed.

lm284694• 11 months ago

Literally nothing ? because statistically speaking they virtually all survived. And of the ones that did not survive the extreme vast majority didn't die because they were "playing outside"

danaris2• 11 months ago

And just what percentage of kids who played outside in the late '80s/early '90s do you think were seriously injured or abducted?

Because whatever you think it is, that's probably much too high. Because it almost never happened. There were a very few highly-publicized cases of children disappearing (eg, JonBenet Ramsey, or in my area Sarah Ann Wood), but a) those were always incredibly rare, and b) such occurrences have been getting steadily rarer for many decades.

thefaux2• 11 months ago

I had a similar experience and sadly the culture seemed to shift during the 90s so that children were stripped of most of their autonomy. Having not experienced it themselves, many struggle to even imagine the possibilities or benefits.

I will also mention I experienced periods of absolutely crushing boredom at times during the summer when I did not have friends or parents around and had nothing to do but watch daytime television. But I learned from the boredom. It is sad to me that so many today are instead being fed from the drip of constant personalized entertainment that makes it harder to get to the place of complete boredom that ultimately can spark creativity instead of succumbing to learned helplessness.

hydrogen78002• 11 months ago

I guess I'm about your age, and I remember doing much of the same. Lots of time on my bike with friends, playing hockey or football in the street, "manhunt" at night around the neighborhood (we were too cool to call it hide-and-seek at that age). But I also remember playing video games indoors, and my mother reminding us about how her mother kicked her out of the house when she was young, and how they were outside until the streetlights came on.

Today, I hear a lot of complaining about kids being inside all the time as opposed to prior generations. However, this is anecdotal and maybe my neighborhood is unique, I always see kids out on bikes with basketballs, fishing rods, etc. We are slowly letting our kid on their bike around the neighborhood with friends, and my big fear is getting hit by a car, especially while in a group and everyone pays less attention.

cameldrv3• 11 months ago

Me too. One thing I noticed in the 2000s was kids being more and more restricted and then they started getting drivers licenses later, living with their parents after college, etc. It felt as if parents thought that when their kid turned 18, that they would magically mature and become independent. Of course this is a process, and you can start it at 7 or you can start it at 18…

On a happy note, we were out eating at a cafeteria type restaurant, but we were sitting outside sort of picnicing about a 3 minute walk away. My son wanted another slice of pizza, but I didn’t really want to go inside and get it for him, so I decided to give him some money and let him get it himself. He came back with the slice of pizza on a plate, on a tray, with the right change and absolutely beaming and he talked about it for days.

rapind• 11 months ago

This is the real problem. Every house has 2+ cars with one parked on the street, which results in no visibility to avoid kids.

s_dev• 11 months ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/north-carolina-child-kil...

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrest...

The US is seeming more bonkers day after day. These sorts of stories just don't make sense to me. We have issues in Ireland with children and teenagers going around engaging in anti-social behaviour but there is a balance to be found between these two extremes.

mtalantikite7• 11 months ago

It's unfortunately very American. Build the entire environment for cars, with very little if any thought for pedestrians, and then put the parents in prison for letting their kids walk a few blocks home, while the driver of the enormous SUV that kills a child has no charges brought against them. We've entirely lost the plot here.

javanissen2• 11 months ago

I see a few phenomena here:

1) The US was rebuilt after WW2 to be highly car-centric, with disastrous results for pedestrian safety. It is actually more dangerous for children to move in public because of this automobile centricity in >95% of US spaces, which drives cultural shifts

2) US media is highly sensationalist; Fox News is popular and generally serves to make viewers frightened of the world

3) The US has 340M people to Ireland’s 5.6M people, so from a base rate, we’d expect ~60x more lurid headlines to come out of the US

uoaei• 11 months ago

I encounter similar sentiments constantly across the internet. One thing we as humans have a lot of trouble with is understanding the scope of experience that isn't commented on in public forums. When we consider comments on the internet to be a representative sample of reality, we get a very warped view of what might happen to us when we step out the door. This paranoia and anxiety is evident in the proliferation of surveillance technologies, etc., and is completely contrary to the obvious decline in crime rates pretty much everywhere.

Rakshith• 11 months ago

this was probably before your country opened the doors to rapists and violent murderers to come live amongst yall though

mtalantikite7• 11 months ago

I hate to break it to you, but the violent murderers have always been here and they're probably not the people you're thinking of...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_th...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_Uni...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porvenir_massacre_(1918)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

etc etc etc

javanissen2• 11 months ago

Illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than US citizens and therefore decrease overall crime rates: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG...

insane_dreamer3• 11 months ago

In the 80’s I’d take the train to another (nearby) city to hang out with my friends, no cell phones, or many for pay phones for that matter, this was at age 11-12. No issue, my parents weren’t worried. I did have an accident once on my bike while in another city and someone picked me up off the street, took me to the hospital and called my parents. Was no big deal.

zabzonk• 11 months ago

Anyone know when this all changed? At the age of 5 I used to walk to school alone without me or my parents worrying. That would have been about 1958/9.

bryanlarsen4• 11 months ago

It was a fairly continuous change since WW2, I think.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/v8cyi7/map_compar...

amanaplanacanal4• 11 months ago

My theory is that it has something to do with infant mortality and family size. Kids are seen as more precious now, so they are protected from every possible danger.

This is probably quite negative for the kids though.

colechristensen• 11 months ago

It became a thing with advertisements and the evening news prompting parents "Do you know where your children are?" from the late 60s to the 90s. It became the mission of television news and similar to make parents afraid because fear gets attention so horror stories about abducted and abused children were everywhere which resulted in the current situation in America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_you_know_where_your_childre...

lm284694• 11 months ago

Depends on the country, I was in eastern europe over winter and there were kids sledging by themselves between buildings, on the local hill, &c. some weren't much older than 5. That was in the second largest city of the country, not some small village where people know everyone.

cameldrv3• 11 months ago

I started walking to school at age 7 in the mid 80s. Granted it was only three blocks and there was a crossing guard for the busy street. At my kids school there’s a crossing guard too, but you hardly ever see a kid crossing without their parent. Maybe a 6th grader.

dyeje• 11 months ago

“What kids told us about how to get off cigarettes”

While I agree there’s a problem with how helicopter-y society is with kids these days, I think it’s ridiculous to expect kids to resist a device that is designed to be addictive. Teams of tens of thousands of the most highly skilled people in the world are laser focused on squeezing every second of attention out of _adults_ let alone kids. We need regulation, full stop. I don’t know what that looks like, but if you’ve ever seen a toddler scrolling TikTok like a zombie you should know what’s at stake.

jacknews• 11 months ago

"always available and will cater to a child’s every whim. But AI will never fulfill children’s deepest desires."

I'm pretty sure it will be able satisfy almost every desire. But I think there's quite a confusion about desire, even deep desire, and deep needs and what's ultimately good for us.

Capitalism makes the same mistake.

What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

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