Why do people say it’s not safe for kids to play outside anymore?

[Waitingforthesunnydays]

People always say things like “it’s not like it used to be, kids can’t go off and play outside on their own these days”, “In my day we’d be out playing all day, the world’s not what it used to be”, “You can’t do that these days, it’s just not safe” etc etc. AIBU for thinking the world’s no more dangerous than it was in the 70s/80s/90s and it’s just and excuse for parents not to feel guilty about letting their kids sit home gaming all day? I get that we are now more aware & educated about the dangers (although in the 80s weren’t parents obsessed with “stranger danger”? - there were ad campaigns about it everywhere) but it doesn’t mean it actually IS more dangerous. Or am I missing something? Is the world somehow more dangerous in this respect now? I grew up in a rural area in the 90s and as a kid I’d be out morning till evening every weekend roaming for miles with all the village kids. Nothing bad ever happened and we were never in any kind of danger. I live in a rural area now and I’d love for my kids to have the kind of childhood I had but for their friends’ parents it’s all about structured play dates and organised trips to play centres etc. so even if they wanted to go knock on their mates’ doors to ask if they want to come out and play (they’re 9 & 11) the parents wouldn’t appreciate it or let them out at all.

Neighbours don't know each other very well now. Kids often didn't just disappear into the night. There would be people everywhere who'd just seen your child down by X, out with X's daughter etc.

Because social media tells them it's unsafe. We actually live in the safest of times

Cars.

Last house kids couldn't play out as had mad 20 year old male drivers who swing round corners at speed and go along footpaths they lived down the street. I heard simailt complaint from freidn in cul de sack - though there it was young in 20s woman who didn't look and had some near misses. Other streets it wa solder people coming out and shouting at kids for being loud or being near cars.

Also other parents and wider societey tend to judge if kids are out by themselevs as ages them deem too young. That can lead to reports to authorities. Even 11 at secondary going up the town other parents made harder.

It does depend on where though - do see younger kids on greens here in summer - but often wth older kids and not far from house - post 11-12 see kids out at parks and wandering round. Also schools have tended to make it harder fro younger kids to walk home themsleves without an adult age goes up and up - so being out at younger ages is no longer normalised.

I didn't let my children's play out in the street unsupervised in the 90s and neither did any of my friends. They played with friends after school sometimes but it was always arranged and they never knocked on people's door asking to play out and children didn't knock on our door.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s and it was common then for children to play out and call for friends but there were very few cars around so the roads were much safer. . That had definitely changed by the late 80s 90s. When children were supervised at least until year 7

Much busier places now with more people, more cars. Less visible police around.

The sense of community in a lot of areas is lacking - people don't look out for each other in the same way and are not aware of who is living around them

Awareness of the dangers of the outside world has increased due to the Internet and the millions of crime programmes on tv etc. There are so many police programmes on tv, violent scenes and details are much more accepted in the mainstream.

So, so all in all, it amounts to being a lot more wary of what could go wrong.

People are scared of either telling kids off who are doing something dangerous/ antisocial or helping if a child is upset or injured for fear of being accused of something (see a previous poster's story about her DP trying to help a 3 year old out on their own).

I've heard children themselves shout 'paedo' at an adult who was trying to reason with them/ ask if things are OK.

That alone significantly cuts down the safety margin for children out on their own.

This is totally wrong. Violent crime and traffic deaths (in the UK) are all lower than a generation ago, or two generations ago. Child abduction is so rare as to be essentially irrelevant from a risk perspective (and as PP have said is mostly conducted by non-resident parents anyway). Sexual abuse is mostly conducted inside the home by people known to the child, rather than by strangers in the park.

But it’s interesting that you think it. Your perception that risk is higher than it used to be is very common. Perceptions of risk have clearly risen even if actual risk has not.

The other thing that has changed is risk tolerance. Some things that are just as risky as they always have been (e.g. letting a group of children play unsupervised by a stream) are now considered unacceptable, whereas 50 years ask they were normal.

I think this changing tolerance for risk is one of the reasons people think the world is riskier than it used to be, even though it isn’t. It feels riskier than it used to because our tolerance for risk has fallen.

https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/most-crime-has-fallen-by-90-in-30-years-so-why-does-the-public-think-its-increased/

Yes schools are often very uncomfortable letting children under year 5 or so (age 10) walk home alone.

i had to write a letter to my kids school explicitly saying I took responsibility for them travelling home alone when they started cycle back on their own sometimes in year 4 (age 9)

Well for me and the area I live in all the green land we used to play on has been built on,even a quarry we used to hang out on has been filled and built on plus there are far far more cars,hgv’s that seem to go where the hell they want,idiot speeding drivers!so stranger danger aside in the 80’s it was far safer also people had community spirit back then,everyone knew each other”have you seen our nic”yeah she’s down road kind of thing.

Exactly this. There is much less sense of ‘community’, with far less people brave enough to intervene if something untoward occurs, and far fewer caring / trustworthy people around to support the positive aspects.
Parents of our generation and before could rely on neighbours / friends/ shopkeepers, etc. to keep an eye out or speak up. Nowadays, they won’t - and kids don’t respect the authority of those types of figures either, which creates a void of care…

There were also Bobby’s on the beat back then.

Child deaths and injuries due to cars also seem to have fallen massively.

data sheet here(from a decade ago but it goes back to 1979)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a756524ed915d6faf2b2a56/child-casualties-2013-data.pdf

The nothing bad ever happened in the 80s and 90s is questionable- my brother’s friend’s bike was robbed and he was punched, a friend of mine had a group of guys chase her and she got away. When she got home her parents hadn’t even known she was out! Kids were just left to it- age 13 I used to walk through a dodgy field to get to the shopping centre and pray there wasn’t a group of guys by the bridge. I know someone who actually tried climbing an electricity pole! I see kids walking to school every morning running in front of cars and I know their parents are saying how their child is very responsible yada yada yada- I honestly think it’s a case of rose tinted glasses!!

I brought my children up in a Scottish village and the children played out - we live on a cul de sac and all the kids would play outside on their bikes, scooters & skateboards all summer. Hideously dull and no public transport as they got older but fantastic when they were little. They are now fully grown & choose to live in cities.

Thinking about it, I don't see so many children playing out around the village these days but I am maybe not aware or about at the right times.

The day Robert Black snatched Caroline Hogg there were 9 known paedophiles in the immediate area that the police investigation focused on. It never was safe! With broader news coverage we have all become more aware of the one-in-a-million scenarios and are rightly determined that it won’t be our child.

I actually isn’t true. They have done a study that suggested you would have to leave your kid on the corner of a street for 20,000 years before they encountered a monster. Sentiment as reality is the issue.

To all the posters that quoted me - I’m happy to be corrected with statistics. But my thoughts on this are that the world has evolved - look at the amount of copycat crimes that are happening (school shootings in the US, there was recently a 24h in police custody episode that a young man was consuming a lot of brutal content and tried to do the same but was intercepted, people interact with others online that they would have never otherwise encountered, children targeted in games and other platforms told to kill themselves) you didn't have those types of crimes before the internet.

This reminds me of the “nappy on vs off at the beach debate”

People say it’s so great letting young children be free, and they’re nostalgic about it. But it’s an unnecessary risk, and for what?

Same with letting primary school age children play out in the street and roam around all the time.

Most 8, 9, 10 year olds are perfectly happy to do activities with their families. They don’t really care about having that kind of independence when friends aren’t doing it either! Culture has changed.

Too many cars, no other children about. Really not an appealing idea.

Others can set their own boundaries, but mine won’t be playing out on the street.

Thanks for your post. I posted a link to the stats upthread.

The story you describe definitely is scary, but anecdotal. School shootings thankfully aren’t really a thing in the UK, and even if they were you can’t prevent them by stopping your kids playing on the streets. So unless you’re in the US not worth worrying about.

On the whole it’s better to look at data than anecdotal stories from TV. And the data says the UK is just about the safest for children it’s ever been. That’s worthy of celebration!

We have taken to spelling out exactly what supervision will be as we have been taken a back by some recent parental expectations.
Eg theme park trip for 12/13yr olds. We permit to go around in small groups with way to contact leaders, regular check ins and leaders in high viz walking around. School operates same system for yr7 trip. But some parents expected us to be going around with them including on rides.

That good but I susepct it's probably a combination of better car design, more awarenss of rsiks and a change in behavior driven partly by culture about letting younger kids out unsupervised.

There are more cars than ever increasing risk to kids so fewer kids play out reducing car deaths.

Drunk driving has also fallen a lot, and urban speeds have fallen. But you’re right better car design probably plays a big role too.

Another impact of social media is that news spreads like wildfire.

We had an incident locally where a Year 6 boy claimed that someone had tried to abduct him when he was on the way to school. It quite quickly came out that he had made up the whole story. But not before the whole town was convinced that there was an unknown child snatcher roaming the streets. And of course the message that it wasn't a true story didn't spread as quickly as the false one.

In pre social media days, no one would have known beyond the boy's family and his closest friends.

I used to play out in the 90s. I don’t think it was safer at all back then. I remember playing on building sites, making unsafe rope swings and generally getting up to all sorts. I used to knock on the door of a friend’s older brother (in his early 30s) to ask to use his toilet.

My 11 year old plays out now. She has tracking on her phone and the deal is that she can go and play but if I check and she is someone not allowed or that she hasn’t asked then she is no longer allowed to. She is also not allowed into anyone’s house unless she comes home and asks first (unless one of her very close friends where she goes regularly). This has worked for over a year and we’ve had no problems.

My parents were super strict so I just lied to them about what I was doing so I’m working really hard to keep an open dialogue.

Some crimes have risen, knife crime up 80% in ten years, violent crime a third in the same period, overall recorded crime in London has risen over 30% in that time and violent crime 40%. Sexual assault and rape has also gone up. Nobody is nicking VCRs and fewer people are being murdered. But true crime rates are very very hard to guage, police stats notoriously unreliable and crime survey response has fallen to about 40% so likely to be missing those most likely to be a victim of crime