True, I rode all over the place when I was a kid. We let my daughter ride everywhere she wanted within our (very large) subdivision, but it’s semi-rural and the entrances are both country roads that cars hurtle down, so we didn’t feel safe letting her down those. When I was a kid, I lived in town, so it was different. Maybe kids in town aren’t like that anymore though.
The problem is that there isnt really anywhere for kids to hangout any more. Playgrounds are for small kids, but even just biking to the library is completely out of the question for most middle schoolers/early teens who dont have a car. There’s no malls, few small public parks, no arcades, small local dinners/ice cream joints, or any other "third places"that aren’t just school or home. We, as a society, have spent the past 40 years destroying the concept of a public space and are now shocked that we dont see kids hanging out in non-existent spaces.
Yeah, it sucks for my daughter. There’s almost nowhere to go. And worse, there’s almost nowhere to go that doesn’t cost money and we’re down to a single income. There was so much to do when I was a teenager growing up. There was a small park downtown where all the punk, goth and alternative teens hung out. I must have spent half my teenage years in that park.
My daughter is in online school now. I don’t even know where she should go to make friends.
They can hang out anywhere they want actually. We didn’t have any kid hangout places back in the 90s and we biked and skateboarded all over town. We hung out with friends in parking lots and stores, wherever we wanted to basically.
The problem is the frame of mind that they need a structured environment to do their activities when they don’t.
