"Think how much childhood has changed, based on our collective misperception of stranger danger...."
"Think how much childhood has changed, based on our collective misperception of stranger danger. As reported here just last week, the age that parents now let their kids play outside, unsupervised, has gone up by TWO YEARS in just one generation. Parents who played outside on their own at age 9 now give their own kids that freedom at age 11.
"What’s more, all sorts of studies show kids are spending far more time on the couch, on devices, on homework, on organised sports — on almost anything indoors and/or adult-supervised, because, in part, this feels like risk mitigation. We’ve mitigated risk to the point where kids now spend an average of 4 to 7 MINUTES A DAY outdoors in unstructured play. This does not feel like an unalloyed triumph."
4 comments:
That's Generation Z. They're an escapist generation. And you would be too if you'd grown up parented and taught by the scary Millennial Victimhood Culture generation.
Gen Z+1 will/do spend plenty of time outside. They'll be the punks to tear the system down. Can't expect Gen Z to do that. They're the new Silent Generation. They'll give us art, not revolution.
I have no idea what you just said. Could you perhaps translate it into English?
I think Rick's referring to the generational theory explained here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation
Theory: That we are to varying degrees influenced by the predominant cultural concerns of our parents in the period we're growing up in, and/or reacting to the excesses in the generation ahead of us - leading to generational traits that tend to repeat themselves every 4 generations.
It also feeds into the theory that broad historical trends tend to repeat themselves to some degree every 80-90 years or so (4 generations duration).
Another way to think of it is that by the end of a long human life (80-90 years), there's nobody left who learnt from the lessons of events 80-90 years ago, so they need to be relearnt.
I think the theory has some merits in describing an influencer - albeit not a determiner of generational traits, cultural trends, and historical events.
Rick's saying this over-emphasis on safety and security is predominantly a feature of Generation Z (born 1997-2012), that it can be seen too in the Silent Generation (born 1928-45) too, and the generation that comes next won't be afflicted with the same over-focus on safety and security to the same degree.
Not sure I give much credence at all to any of this 'generational theory' as any major causal influence on affairs.
Sure, there was an argument, starting from the major wars, that war itself was a powerful factor on the cohorts either in war, killed by war, or born after a major war (when even a boring peace was exciting, by contrast).
But extending from theories about those born in the post-war baby boom (which is an actual causal thing, and where this generational theory stuff really started) to ideas about recent generations looks to me just so much piffle. And hardly says anything at all about the contemporary mythology about 'stranger danger.'
So in short, if your last sentence is a translation of what Rick said, then I see no causality in the explanation. It simply puts casuality back a step.
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