-remember when your friend's Mom could smack you upside the head for being stupid just as easy as your own Mom could?

-remember when you'd see a stranger with a flat tire and someone would pull over to help?

-or give you a ride if your car stalled or ran out of gas?

-when you'd open your home to a stranger in need?

-when you knew the name of each of your neighbors, their kids, kids friends?

-when playing outside was something you wanted to do, not were forced to do? And you did it without parental supervision.

Now the above behavior would have you arrested, classified as a nut case, a risk taker, or heroic, depending on the teller of the story.

How crazy has the world become in less than a generation...

I've noticed in my small community that all these young kids (young as in under the age of 13) are driving 4-wheelers around town. When i was that age, we walked everywhere...i mean..everywhere. I probably walked a few miles a day on average when i was a kid...just getting from here to there. Leaving the exercise factor out of the equation, it bothers me to see these kids driving, even 4-wheelers.

Things are BETTER now than before. You're just comparing unsubstantiated fears about the present to an idealized version of the past.

OK, i'll give you obesity. That's worse.

huh? while technology has certainly made our lives easier today, not sure what you mean by better. when is the last time you passed a park that was full of kids playing and no parents around? or heard an ice cream truck drive down your street? or saw a game of kick the can being played? that you saw a group of kids riding their bikes to the local swimming hole/creek/ribver. or with fishing poles?

in the past month i've heard of 2 different mothers in 2 different states arrested for letting their kid walk down the street to play ina park. over the weekend a mother was arrested in walmart for saying the F-word to her husband in from of her kid (certainly understandable, he put the frozen pizzas on top of the bread in the grocery cart).

you see a kid in a store acting out and you say something, you're likely to be confronted by the parent for speaking to their kid instead of the aprent thanking you for stepping in. Parents today blame their kids teachers and curriculum for bad grades instead of blaming the kids.

I grew up in a fairly large city (+750,000 people), and i don't recall anyone at any school getting shot by a classmate, in or out of school. My son was telling me last night that one of his classmates was arrested over the weekend for shooting 5 people - and we live in a town of 8500.

better? just not seeing it...or maybe we just have different ideas of what better means.

I'll admit that i've become soft in my old(er) age...when i was kid, the temperature reading was irrelevant...i was outside...cuz i wanted to be. Nowadays, temperature is everything to me when it comes to planning outdoor activities.

It has gotten ridiculously ridiculous, IMHO.

Now, if you say "Why I'm gonna beat him into next Tuesday" in reference to spanking your kid...you can literally be arrested for "a terroristic threat or act". (which is a felony, btw)

We walked EVERYWHERE or rode our bikes ... MILES and MILES and played in the woods...swinging from vines, down cliffs..diving off cliffs into springs that are now boardwalked off so you can't even get to these areas. We didn't wear helmets, kneepads, elbow pads and we drank out of water hoses.

We were TOUGH! NOt any more...nosirree.

you used to beat the snot out of someone causing you harm now you are stuck running them over in you 4x4 and claiming it was an accident.

after "superstorm" Sandy someone puts out an extension cord for people to charge their cell phones and they are hailed as "heroic" and it makes the national news...

down in the south, that is called neighborly and people wouldn't bat an eye that it was done...

crazy

And the real crazy part was that the cell phone would not work because the towers did not have power.

Word.

And because we were so active we sometimes ended up in the ER but no one called social services on our parents for child abuse.

Really? I'm not being sarcastic. I'm really interested in how you could view the world of today's kids as better than before?

Goodnight, I had to walk to school, no buses to cart my butt there, uphill in the snow in both directions, for at least 5 miles. I was not given breakfast and lunch by the school, but we could go out to recess and play cowboys and indians, or tag, or dodge ball, or war.

One good thing though, we didn't have to wear a heart monitor during gym class.

It seems we live in a state of fear these days.

I grew up in a suburb that had Chicago on three sides of it. We would go out on a summer morning on our bikes and be gone all day. If you stopped at someone's house, it's likely his mom would feed you. We'd play without anyone watching us until the streetlights came on.

I think part of it was that we knew all the neighbors. Today, I know the people on either side of me pretty well, but the people behind us have done their best to be unfriendly. We even brought them cookies when they moved in. They must be in witness protection or something.

raitch, we have toddlers driving battery powered cars down the sidewalk. I keep thinking, someone get those kids a tricycle.

MBH....mind you, i live in podunkville, and you have to really want to get there (no highway goes THRU my town), but these 7 and 8 year old kids are driving 4 wheelers on the paved road through town. Pretty scary if you ask me.

You people took all the fun away from us kids! Darn enablers. I don't think the 5 year olds that are firmly planted in front of an iPad all day bought it themselves.

I do think it's a shame the way society has changed since these fabled olden days when Andy Griffith/Leave it to Beaver was a reflection of what small town life was actually like, but unless we have a major technology devolution, how would the "problem" ever get "better"? I'm sure when I grow up, I'll be cranky about how nobody even understands how hard it was to have dialup internet anymore, or knows what it's like to have to go to a friend's house to play some video games together because they do it all online from their own houses now. And then I'll say society when I was a kid was much better that it's become.

That's all assuming there's not a nuclear event, ice age, or alien/zombie invasion that takes out the world before I get old though.

I don't think people have changed....but i do think circumstances have changed, which affects how people live their lives.

I remember the first video game i ever played.....Pong. We were enthralled. It's hard to imagine why now, looking back.

But he's not talking about that long ago. Most of what's been described here I experienced growing up in the 80's, early 90's (I'm in my mid ::cough:: to-late ::cough:: 30's). It has happened much more quickly than I think you realize.

Scary thought: Does it continue to change at this pace? Where does that put us in another 10-15 years ?

I know...right?!!!

We rent cottages on a private lake every August, this year there were 14 adults and 2 little ones (7 & 5). One of my sons & his fiance wanted to play flashlight tag one night with the 2 kids. After some belly aching from some of the adults we got most of them to play. We had an absolute blast, most of the laughing was being done by the adults, but the kids, boy the pure joy of being outside playing with the big boys was actually fun to watch. We now plan to do more outdoor stuff at night with the kids rather than sitting around playing cards & drinking. We will save that for after the kids go to bed.

we had the first Atari in the neighborhood, 2 or 4 player pong...we were the coolest house on the block in the late 70s...

my parents divorced when i was 10, Dad used to leave us home alone on weekend nights when he had a date...4 kids 12, 11, 10, and 8...we would make our own dinner, clean up after ourselves, play outside until someone's mom said it was time for all the kids to go inside (usually 10-10:30 on a weekend), and we all survived. now you can't leave a kid under 15 home alone without fear of the cops breaking down your door and arresting you.

when i was 12 i was the wheelie king of the neighborhood - could ride a wheelie on my bike for blocks on end. one afternoon i was going for the record and a car turned the corner and i went into his windshield and broke it. all the kids in the neighborhood saw it and the guy brought me home...i ended up with a concussion and my Dad paid for the guys windshield, apologizing for me being such a doofus (not the exact term he used, suffice to say he would be arrested in walmart today for the words he used). If that were to happen today, we'd sue the guy for a gajillion dollars and win and he'd go to jail.

I can relate. I'm one of 4 siblings too...i'm the youngest....my oldest sister, 6 years ahead of me was kinda 2nd mom. When Mom and Dad needed to be gone, she kept us in line.....but we 4 could always keep ourselves entertained.

Just looking at kids-- they're safer (it doesn't seem that way, but statistics say they are). yeah, some places take the safety thing too far, but most of those stories are anecdotal and in a nation of 300 million +, you're gonna find people who are too afraid of risk. There were tons of uptight parents and teachers who didn't let their kids out when we were kids, you just didn't hear about them because there was no internet to make stories go viral. But a lot of the things that we did as kids WERE too dangerous. like i remember crawling around on the back floorboard of the car. That didn't build character or make me tougher than a carseat would have. it just made it more likely i'd die if we'd crashed.

yeah, i'd like to see a little less video games and more activity, but i think you're overrating how active you were as a kid. There were a lot of times where you spent hours being compeltely bored and it sucked. like, literally staring into space bored. Remember pogs? those have no redeeming qualities over video games. They're just worse versions.

And there's much more options for kids who do want to be active. all the social media and texting also makes it easier to get people together to get a game of football or anything going.

They have access to so much more knowledge. You can pick any subject you're interested in and basically have access to all the information about it in the world.

And depending on when you think the good old days are, girls and gay kids and kids from different races and religions have much more opportunities.

yeah, sometimes there are unintended consequences that make for attention grabbing headlines (that also give everyone a pat on the back for being SO MUCH TOUGHER and reassuring us that our way is the best and change is bad), but i think overall life is improving.

I dont believe you. this didn't happened.