Why do young people never go out anymore?

[BavarianHound]

I'm 37, so grew up late 90s/early 2000s. I would go out with friends a lot, we'd sit on park benches and wonder around, we'd drink WKDs and could be happily bored in each other's company, we'd call each other or knock the door. I am not saying this was peak socialisation at all, but it was something, we knew how to communicate, how to be bored, had confidence to go to our friends door.

I have 2 sons, 10 & 14. 10 year old will meet with friends, but I'll loiter in the background (he has ASD&ADHD). But my 14 year old never goes out. He plays some sport, but other than that, he is home. He has all this physical energy so can be incredibly hard work because he takes it out on us, just in a playful but annoying way. Very few people he knows seem to go out too, but are home gaming. It feels stunted, and they will never get this time back.

As an aside, local Facebook groups are a hive of "just seen boys hanging outside CO OP, just warning' or 'boys still on a roof, parents shouldn't be allowing such behaviour ' and they attach photos. Not saying anti social behaviour is acceptable, just highlighting that where there was no social commentary on teenagers previously, there is now.

I'm not sure girls are as affected?

Feels like a lost generation ?

Maybe being outside doesn't feel as free as used to because there's always a camera around. I'm sure covid lockdowns played into it a lot too. All that time of not being able to socialise with friends outside so staying I'm became the new normal.
I think there are a lot more overprotective parents too, like yourself watching over your 10yo. It's very unlikely that would have happened 20 years ago unless the child was severely disabled. I had a friend with ADHD and a friend who was deaf who would play out without a parent.

What did they do for physical exercise

The camera thing has definitely played a part and is something I feel anxious about regularly.

When I was going through the usual teen development stuff you knew any mistake or embarrassing thing you did could lead to gossip and piss-taking but that's very different to it being filmed and put online/shared with others.

I completely get what you’re saying but I just think times change.

Parents are more anxious now and we would be worried about our kids going out all day.

Parents would also encourage you/push you out of the house and being inside was so boring!

But now socialising is so much easier now they can do it online/in person and it’s fun to stay in because you can do so much on the internet, gaming, watching TV etc.

Look at us as adults.
We also spend much more time indoors and on our phones etc too.

I grew up on quite a rough council estate and I tried my hardest to get away from it but I often feel bad because I actually had a great childhood being out all day and night with the other kids on the estate. Whereas my DD doesn’t have that.

I'm in my 40s and I didn't go out drinking alcohol on park benches. I have heard terrible stories from grown ups recounting their youth. Getting drunk (stomach pumped occassionally) and shagging without condoms in a field. Telling their mums, they're at a sleep over! I personally don't think it's a good way to experience socialising. Lots of kids love gaming and wouldn't want to hang around in the cold. These parents are the ones keeping their kids inside because they're assuming they'd do the same thing! Some parents are concerned about grooming and knife crime ( big thing here where I live) so they're being kept I'm apart from structured clubs/sports.

I saw teens out the other day. Hanging round the bus station and being watched by the security guard.
The poor man who was killed by teenagers In Leicester they weren't inside gaming

There was a lot of trouble when I grew up too. I think people look back with rose tinted glasses thinking teenagers being anti-social is some new phenomenon.

Mine are 16 and 19 (boys) and go out. My 19 year old in particular is never in!

I think every generations childhood was different to the next generations, it doesn’t make it better or worse, it is just their generations way of doing this.

When my Grandparents were young (all passed away now, but they were young about 100 years ago) they used to speak about going out and swimming in the local river (nobody swims in it now because it is considered dangerous) and they thought that was great, when my parents were young they talked about camping a lot and going out on their bikes and thought that was the best, when I was young in the 80s/90s it was just playing out or hanging out in the street/park and we thought that was great, now this generation think shopping/cinema/online gaming is great. I don’t think they are missing out on anything, they are just making different memories.

I think you have to have something to do and that's why I feel sorry for young kids. I can see why boys used to like skateboarding when I was yoinger, it's good to have an interest. That's why kids get in trouble, because they're bored

Honestly OP this isn't my experience. My 15yo son is out right now meeting friends. They go for bike rides or kick a football around.

I did similar to you OP. We did it because we were bored and had absolutely nothing else to do.
My kids are mainly busy with sports and hobbies, so they don’t have much time to hang out on park benches.

spot on

It's like when l told my friends Grandaughter that me and her Mum used to go into town and look around the shops or go swimming on a Saturday morning.. sometimes just for a walk in the summer holidays.
She looked aghast and said " didn't you have the an iPad or mobile phone"?

I have a 15yo DD and I can’t keep her in 😂

She has a large group of both boys and girls and they are always out. The boys have a den/campfire in the woods and the girls sometimes go there to hang out with them, sometimes they go to the nearest McDonald’s and sit there for most of the evening (sharing food and drinks obviously!)

My young people are out all the time and have been from age 9 when they were allowed out without an adult. They go out for cycle rides, have picnics in parks, are in and out of each other's houses, go to the shops, spend a ridiculous amount of time in McDonalds ...

But yes, there is an awful lot of people who seem to think "more than 2 teenagers together = trouble" and like to post it on social media. These people should be ignored.

OP's children are a bit too young, but we should also remember that older teens/young adults will have been younger teens during Covid restrictions, when they were positively encouraged to hang around outdoors!

I'm a few years older than OP and did all the park bench drinking and then some. Took crazy risks, developed an unhealthy relationship with alcohol whereby I struggled to be social without it for years and saw various lads my age end up with criminal records for doing insanely stupid and violent shit in their teens.

I know life has swung dramatically the other way and young people seem isolated and cosseted but I'm glad of it. I wouldn't romanticise my teens years, they were filled with bad decisions and I was lucky to emerge relatively unscathed.

And for the record I'm from a middle of the road suburb, have a masters and am highly successful in work. Just of a fucking bonkers generation.

That didn't happen though.

There seems to be a hyperbole emerging which happened quite quickly that people were in lockdown or in some kind of inordinate restrictions for years and they weren't.

We've all been lied to and told the world is more dangerous than it was before. Now the kinds of kids who are out without parental supervision seem to be the ones causing trouble which feeds into that. Parents wrongly believe that their children are safer online.

Do you invite his friends over? Even if they just game when over its still in person socialisation.

what wrong with teenagers hanging out at a park? why does anything they want to do to socialise have to cost them money.

teenagers being outside isn't automatically anti-social

I think a lot depends entirely on where you live.

Here kids play out. Younger kids on the street. Teens in the skate park.

Where my BIL lives kids can't move without someone complaining on the village page about them. Kids don't play out there

Y 15yr old is out loads.

My children are 15,14, and 11.
The younger two are always out with friends, not drinking WKD, but just hanging out in our villages with their friends. My eldest is autistic and prefers to see friends at our house or their houses.

In my mid teens going into town to meet up or hanging around the streets was what we mainly did. Going to someone's house by that age was a more formal thing often, where you ate a meal with their parents ('tea' normally). Talking on the phone was limited to after 6pm and could well be overheard by other family members. So if you didn't go out at all, you didn't socialise except at school (I had given up any clubs by 12). The only other social contact I had with peers was by letter with former school mates as we had moved to another area a few years previously. When I later went to a 6th form college, things livened up a lot with tons of parties to go to.

For my children (youngest about to leave their teens), much of their socialising has taken place on line. That isn't to say they didn't meet in person, they did but some of their friends / romantic partners were met online initially. One went to parties a bit but the other had fewer social contacts. When I was 18 + drinking in pubs was the main way to socialise but mine have done very little of this.