alt Hacker NewsWe are unfair to teenagers today; give them no place to go and then we feign surprise when they act up. According to Harper's, there's a 20% decline in kids playing baseball--their noses are in their iPads. You can't take children to the mall because malls are dying. Too many parks are places where bad things happen. I don't know what the solution is.
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Not only that, the tween years used to be when you developed the skills of independence that you'd hopefully more or less be able to use to be a teenager. A 9 or 10-year-old would have permission to walk or bike around the neighborhood, to and from school, maybe to a nearby shopping center or corner store... Today they're kept under lock and key for that whole time since we're afraid of having the cops called on us for "unsupervised children walking" by insane people. Teens don't even know how to bridge the gap between "fully chaperoned child" and "adult" so when they are unsupervised they get into trouble, and when they become adults they are so unconfident they do things like choosing college not because they have a passion for a subject, or for learning, or a career interest, but because when you're enrolled in college they arrange your life's schedule and assign you a living space without you having to handle any of the complexity yourself.
Great job, Gen-X parents.
There are a lot of things we could do, but it would mean opposing governments penchant to have control and authority over average citizens. 50 years ago some teens run down the sidewalk being loud, maybe even shooting a bottle rocket or two being a nuisance, what happens? 99% of the time nothing at all, once in awhile a cop might see them and give them a stern warning to be good, and honestly even if they wanted to try and bring charges most courts would have thrown them out if they didn't hurt anybody or break anything because what authority do they have to say kids can't be loud and annoying? Now what happens today if some teens are being loud going down the sidewalk and shoot off a single bottle rocket or just smack a trashcan too loud? Cops get called, kids are forced to submit and half the time handcuffed, somebody gets charged with a crime whether it is a minor for "resisting" by trying to run when they saw a cop coming, having a "dangerous" explosive of a bottle rocket, or a vape, or maybe the parents for being "negligent" for letting their minor run around in public unsupervised or "abuse" for telling their kid to go outside unsupervised. Best case they spend thousands on a lawyer and get the case dismissed, or if they can't afford a lawyer get thousands in fines and fees plus a criminal record.