> There's a feedback loop happening as well. Kids don't play outside so there are no kids playing outside.
So much this. When I was a kid (late 70's), I could count on going outside and finding other kids to play with. Or if I didn't find anyone, I'd ride my bike around until someone came outside. Or, I could even simply knock on my friend's door and say "Can Robert come out and play?" and this was completely acceptable.
I'd love to send my kid outside to play, but he'd just be wandering around by himself. Knocking on a friend's door (though he knows a same-age kid two doors away) would be considered out of bounds nowadays. Any kid get-togethers must be carefully arranged ahead of time with at least one adult monitoring the "playdate."
> Knocking on a friend's door (though he knows a same-age kid two doors away) would be considered out of bounds nowadays.
Yeah, the social dynamics of this kind of thing baffles me. I'm sure it's very neighborhood-dependent, but neighbors don't "check" up on each other either.
I think this is more U.S.-wide: it's not socially acceptable to knock on someone's door or ring their doorbell even if they're waiting for me. You're supposed to text that you're waiting outside. Doorbells are only for deliveries and unknown strangers (like selling something, politics, religious missionaries).
If it's not socially acceptable to knock on a friend's door when they're waiting for you to get there, then it's definitely not gonna be socially acceptable to just knock, see if they're home, say hi, and that's it.
I'm not sure where this is coming from, maybe it's a generational thing?
In my case, (36M living in Texas) it's totally normal for people to knock or ring the doorbell. Neighbors drop by to talk about what's happening in the neighborhood, friends come to visit, etc.
The invention of "anxiety" as a condition afflicting everyone under 40 means it's a faux pas to knock on a door, call a phone, or otherwise interact with anybody unless you warn them ahead of time.
I agree in principle, but I'm pretty sure the anxiety pandemic is real, not invented. Ask a middle- or high-schooler what percent of their class is on medication for anxiety, the answer will surprise you. In my grandma's day, that number would have been zero.
Whatever's going on there, it's serious. I bet in 50 years we discover that some chemical in our food/water/air was responsible, analogous to the leaded gasoline issue.
Or maybe doctors are happy prescribing pills to paper over mundane life issues.
It’s also a nasty feedback loop where all of this “mental health awareness” is blasted at kids all day and they start to assume there is a 50/50 chance they have anxiety and start to… get anxious about it.
I don't know how you would justify such an observation, I suppose you could also quietly observe a bunch of disabled people in wheelchairs and say to yourself "they don't seem interested in not using wheelchairs" but I'm pretty sure they're very interested in not using wheelchairs.
That's fair, my comment wasn't helpful. I have had a few situations where I had to fix my coworkers' mess and they chalked up their inability to help to having anxiety or feeling vulnerable and I was a bit salty about it.
No I don’t think it’s generational. I see it across the age spectrum and I am in Texas too. Lots of neighborhoods just don’t interact. The gems are the neighborhoods where people live there because they really want to live in that house within that neighborhood.
There are lot less stay-at-home parents around. Both my parents worked and I was called a latchkey kid. Nobody uses that terminology anymore. A while a lot of kids did have both parents that worked there were still a lot of mothers around.
We hit the jackpot when we moved and by chance ended up about 100 meters from a street with a critical mass of kids right around my kids' age. My daughters can bike in the street with them after dinner in summer. It's not the city I wanted to settle in forever (Hilversum, NL) but the minute I can buy a house next to the other kids, I'm doing it.
Kids from my neighbourhood consistently come and knock on our door to play with our kids outside (and vice-versa) - not from the States, Canada. Even if there are no other kids to play with I send mine outside to play in the yard, that's how they met most of the kids in the neighbourhood to begin with.
We (my neighbors and I) had to institute a rule that if the gate is shut no knocking on our door because all the kids were running around knocking on each others doors so much. No one could get a meal in or sleep in on the weekend past 8.
So much this. When I was a kid (late 70's), I could count on going outside and finding other kids to play with. Or if I didn't find anyone, I'd ride my bike around until someone came outside. Or, I could even simply knock on my friend's door and say "Can Robert come out and play?" and this was completely acceptable.
I'd love to send my kid outside to play, but he'd just be wandering around by himself. Knocking on a friend's door (though he knows a same-age kid two doors away) would be considered out of bounds nowadays. Any kid get-togethers must be carefully arranged ahead of time with at least one adult monitoring the "playdate."