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 ?

They do go out, socialise, at least the ones I know do. They enjoy themselves well enough, parties, concerts, meals out, visiting and just hanging out.

Internet and gaming are the problem. Sometimes in the summer, we have gangs of kids come down and sit on the pier, jump in the water etc. It might annoy some cronies, but I actually love seeing them out in the sunshine having fun, like teenagers used to!!

I suppose everyone is different, my son is always out, my daughter not so much. My peers, including my brother and sister, were always out, but I was not so much. It seemed that whatever my peers did, I did the opposite and was quite content!

My almost 14 year old son goes out a lot (but never after dark). He and his friends enjoy watching the local football teams play and they also meet up at local astros to play football.

He is in a divisional footie team so trains several evenings a week with his team and plays league games at the weekend . I have always encouraged him to participate in a sport for the physical and social benefits. He started out with swimming, moved on to judo, then kickboxing etc but finally settled on football which has lasted since he was 8.

We have local cycle trails and a skatepark that a lot of teens use but that’s not his thing.

I think parents should encourage their children to socialise and exercise beyond their devices.

Don’t worry too much. As long as your DS is playing sport and goes out with family etc, he’ll be OK eventually.

They socialise with friends online (e.g. via gaming) a lot more now. Or go to play football etc with mates. For a lot of kids post-pandemic, 14 isn’t what it used to be in previous generations. But nothing to worry about.

The reason is because they can and it’s the new normal. Why meet up with friends physically, when you can speak to them via a headset?

My daughter and her friends are out socialising during term time, but spend about 13hrs pw at clubs so when that's done they just wants to chill at home.

This week and last they were out in cafes studying for GCSE. During the holidays they'll be out a couple times at the park, shopping centre, karaoke, cinema, sleepovers... depending on who's in the country at a given time.

They're probably not seen 'out' as much as they now have so many more things to enjoy.

I live on a HA estate. I can currently hear pretty much every child in our little corner, from toddler to pre teen, playing outside and, having looked outside my window, there’s a group of teenagers sitting on the pavement chatting. I know these kids; I know that they’re harmless. But I also know that they look really surly and that they’ll be outside the local shop later and that the people from the new, posh estate the other side of the shop will look at them like they’re thugs about to mug them, and will keep their own DC indoors unless they have a specific place to go, like the cinema, so that they don’t mix and start wandering the streets, which appears to have become a terrible thing since I was doing it.

An increase in different ways to communicate. If I wanted to see my friends as a teen, I had no choice but to leave the house. These days, they can speak to all of their friends at the exact same time, all from the comfort of their room.

I think Gen X was the last generation to universally be able to leave the house in the morning and not be seen again until dinner time. Subsequent generations have been raised with ‘play dates’ (one of the wankiest expressions ever) where children’s social lives have been largely managed by their parents, depending on who the parents get on with. Children haven’t been allowed to manage their own social lives. All of their spare time has been filled with acceptable ‘activities’. They’ve been driven everywhere and have no street smarts. Parents want to meet their friends and their friend’s parents before they decide whether they’ll allow the friendship to continue.

Going out to play doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. People don’t want to see children playing together outside their houses; you regularly see threads on here that people don’t like the noise, or worry about damage to their cars, or say it’s not safe, and that they should be in parks. But when they go to the parks, parents want them home so they can be sure that they’re not drinking 20/20 with their mates.

I think it’s largely the fault of the adults around them. We have coddled them and infantilised them far, far more than is necessary, we have taught them that they are precious and vulnerable and that outside is full of risk and bigger children who will lead them astray and force them to get up to naughty stuff, and now we don’t understand why they aren’t desperate to get outside and have a look for themselves.

It's down to whon they are. Some people like.going out with friends, others are happier at home. It's always been like that

Ds2 still goes out but only occasionally. He games a lot, plays football for a team, meets friends to play football, they meet up to go to the cinema and get piri-piri chicken. It's fine.

'boys still on a roof, parents shouldn't be allowing such behaviour

😂😂😂

That was me when I was growing up

No idea how we weren’t killed. Best day out would be finding an old abandoned house (usually the 5storey Victorian places that had become too much for 1 family to afford or had been earmarked in the slum clearance area and go inside and play and end up on the roof

If we found anything we thought we could sell it would be perfect as then we would buy a bottle of lemonade to share

Most of the time though we would climb onto the local church roof

I hear you op, you did used to learn alot in those years
Perhaps why kids seem so much younger now

There’s too much accessible home entertainment to make going out seem an attractive alternative.

@WilfredsPies Glad I’m not the only one who cringes at the term ‘play date’!

I think a lot of it’s luck too. I’m Gen X and DC Gen Z. They played out in the street (in a huge city) from a v young age. But that’s because of kids in neighbouring homes, some of whom were older but all of whom were streetwise, sensible and kind. So a whole gang of them played out and all us parents kept an eye, let them come and go in our homes, got to know each other etc.

We don’t live in that street any more and when I walk up it now there are no kids playing out. Where I live now, the lad opposite (about 10) plays in the street with his ball. But no other kids join him, which is a shame.

This is great.
I do think some things … shopping malls, cinema, bowling do tend to cost - even clubbing, pubs, and some teens have very little money if any. I think young people with an allowance or parents who pay for clubs etc tend to have more choice in what they do.

I think your right that this pattern is alot more common now sadly.
Some teens of course still go out and do things, but all seems especially for girls very structured and arranged rather than just 'hanging out' I guess.I work with pre-teens/young teens and know some personally too, and I think screen time has sadly become the default setting for them.When they have so many chat facilities via games and social media it seems much of the socialising outside school is done through that.
I'm 37 too and I do recall that towards my mid teens when MSN became a thing this trend was beginning and I felt lonely and bored alot when not online as people seemed to hibernate at home quite abit.Probably didn't help that I had no boyfriend or siblings like they did.

The current generation is too sophisticated for park benches and WKD.

Couldn't be anything to do with how you've raised them.

My eldest is at the beach and my youngest has sneaked into a pub to watch the football. No doubt he will be on the beach after the football.

Agree. Pushing the rules a bit is what teenagers should be doing - big difference between having WKD in a park and mainlining ket at an illegal rave.

Kids seem so scared of everything now. I remember reading on here about a poster’s DD who had reluctantly gone to a nightclub, been touched on the waist as a man walked past so escaped to the loo, saw somebody sniffing coke in the loo (not nice but not a threat to her) and freaked out, running out of the club which of course she then wasn’t allowed back in. She was then too scared to get a cab as she felt many taxi drivers are rapists, so ended up crying on the street and needing help from a passing group of (far more streetwise) girls.

I feel like this is the result of constantly warning our DC everything is unsafe and heavily monitoring everything they do. I caught the train to the nearest city for school alone from age 11, was allowed trips to the city alone to meet friends at the weekend from 13, and was left home alone for the weekend from age 15 so my parents could have a night away. That seemed perfectly normal at the time, I was left some food and an emergency £30.

Also what people said about gaming. I feel really sorry for Gen Z and wouldn’t be a teen now for any amount of money. We’ve badly let them down.

I think society in general is much less tolerant of kids just hanging about - I think younger kids play out in the street much, much less than we used to - mainly because there’s so much more traffic on the roads, in my area at least - and that’s had an impact. When I was a kid, we went from playing ball games/ riding bikes in the street to going for a wander/ sitting on a wall chatting. I don’t think there are enough free/ cheap
places for teens to hang out - bowling, arcades, Starbucks are all v expensive.

My grandkids go out a lot. Aged 12, 14 and 18. They come from gaming families but have always been encouraged to do stuff outdoors too. They go and meet their mates on the park, or the 18 yo walks for miles with their best mate just to get out. We’ve just had a family day out walking till rain stopped play. No complaining, no phones. Just in the moment. Been great!

Do you encourage going out?

I often wonder how much late-diagnosed neurodivergence is actually a failure to develop social skills due to gaming, tech and the lack of face-to-face conversations as we have WhatsApp etc?

Mine all work so have their own money. I do give them a small allowance (well not the one that is an adult, he pays rent!) but that is mainly for clothes. They have all worked from aged 13.

This is a UK-based site with a primarily UK poster base.

Most people assume most posters are in the UK because they are.

MN went a bit nuts in the 1st UK lockdown which was from the end of March till the beginning of June.

Lot's of threads from people railing against it because only the vulnerable and elderly were at risk so why should their and their DCs lives be affected.

And others predicting the total collapse of society and life as we knew it

When schools reopened with infection control policies in June, at that point there were numerous threads about how despicable it was for schools to reopen, that DC and teachers were at risk and how many people didn't want to send their DC back to school.

There were minor restrictions in the summer of 2020 and a government campaign to get people using pubs and restaurants (with infection control) with financial incentives.

Schools went back into September with infection controls

We had the second wave in winter of 2020 with some restrictions but nothing like March-June.

Covid undoubtedly affected DCs education due to the restrictions. Some very young DC didn't get to start school as they should. DC in exam years were generally better off as those DC who were crap at exams were awarded estimated grades often higher than what they would have achieved.

But the poster I responded to wasn't saying any of that, they were saying DC weren't going out now because..

"Well, their formulative years were spent being told they weren't allowed to go out, go to school, lest they kill of 90yo Doris, etc so they learnt to socialise virtually and that has stuck"

Which didn't happen. And the whole "90 year old Doris" idea was from the beginning a sign of people who didn't understand what a pandemic was and thought their 'rights' were being curtailed to stop old people dying. And they didn't care about old people anyway.

A lot of people realised that wasn't the case as the pandemic developed but apparently a few still think restrictions and infection control procedures were just to protect 90 year olds 🤔 and will blame that for all of societal ills for a long time.

Gaming. It was devised to ruin boys and men and make sure they stay compliant at home and not rising up, marching in the streets against the government, etc.