• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    3 hours ago

    I used to live in a house that was on a big circle, with all the back yards joining in the middle. None of the houses had fences, so it was just one huge field, with the occasional tree. If that had been my backyard as a kid in the 60s and 70s, that giant field of combined backyards would have been filled with kids every day. I would have known the names of every other kid, where they lived, and probably their parents, too.

    But when I lived there about 10 years ago, I seldom saw a single kid out there. In the 5 years I was there, I saw kids playing maybe 3 times.

    A couple years before we moved, one of the house on the circle sold to a family with kids. They put a giant fence up, and the kids played in their own backyard, with no contact with others.