Lebowski

when i was a kid (it wasn't all that long ago, i'm only 18 but you know what i mean) all we did was bike. our bmx bikes were our pride and joy, they were our livelihood. we tore up the dirt track, made little ramps out of plywood and set them on the sidewalk. when we had nothing to do we just rode around. we raced and argued that our GT bikes were superior to the Schwinnns or whatever. everything we did in the warmer months revolved around biking. I'm not just saying my friends and i were bike obsessed, but all the kids in town were.

so the other day it was the first 60 degree day outside. i was out joyriding. i expected to see lots of elementary and middle school aged kids biking around. there weren't any. there weren't any skaters or Rollerbladers either. i saw a couple guys from my high school doing the traditional first nice weather bike ride. everyone else must have been inside playing video games. sure we had playstation and N64 back in the day, but when the snow melted we hit the streets. kids these days have no imagination. i don't see car dependency going down when we have a whole generation of lazy useless kids.

Tiller88

Yeah man I hear ya, Im only 19 for the record but...

It has changed alot, kids dont want to go outside and play or have fun and they are soooo disrespectful to the elders... Like yelling at the parents and cussing (I cuss but I didnt cuss when I was 10 my dad would have stomped a mudhole in me)

Then it seems like when you do find some cool kids theyre smokin pot, or doing some type of new drug...

It seems like (to me and what I have seen) alot of kids just want to fight to, like if they dont like you they want to fight you....???

Its sad....

BarracksSi

And when you do see any kids, their parents are always nearby. Don't know if the parents dragged the kids outside or vice versa.

Retro Grouch 

Lots of people today are afraid to let their kids out of sight.

I drive a school bus. We aren't supposed to let kindergarten or first graders off of the bus unless there is a parent or gardian to meet them. (We'll usually swing by a second time then, if there still isn't somebody available, we take them back to school.) I also see a fair number of middle school parents who still meet their kids at the bus stop every single day. We recently had a well publicized incident near St Louis in which a predator abducted a middle school boy from his rural bus stop.

Tiller88

see I didnt think about that, yeah I can kind of understand that now.... Id just put my kid in Krav Maga and let him run around lol

youtube krav maga =P im gonig to take it soon if I have time

College+work+homework+bike=no time and my girlfriend gets some time to lol

Nightshade

Two words....video games. These and the net have replaced kids playing together.

ProFail

Eh, I'm 14 and I have to agree with you guys- Seems like no one wants to be outside these days but a select few kids.


Side Note- Bikes have no "cool" factor to them. Kid on bike=Dork

StephenH

Yup, it's video games. And cable, I guess. I'm 47. When I was a kid, we biked around, but I did lots of other stuff too. But a lot of that was just out of boredom. Daytime TV was only soap operas or game shows. Plus, our house wasn't air conditioned, so the two cool things you could do in the summer were sit in front of a fan or ride around on a bicycle. Both of my kids (now 20 and 17) have had bikes, but never did spend all that much time on them. But right this minute, they're in the living room playing video games.

BarracksSi

These indoor-only kids are making their presence felt when physical exertion and coordination are involved, too. Both are needed where I work, and some of them just can't hack it.

I mean, jeez, some of them can't even kick a soccer ball...

Tiller88

to be fair thought im sure its harder because if they want to go to the friends house or something and its a tight family maybe that cant afford gas

akatsuki

I think it is overprotective parents more than video games. I played a ton of video games as a kid, and still managed to go outside.

maddyfish

That's funny I said the same thing 10 years ago about 9-10 year olds at the time.

My kids ride alot; to school, to practice, and to other school activities.

Flying Merkel

I drove by my old junior high last week. When I went there is the mid '70s, the bike parking area was packed with stripped down Stingrays & Schwinn Varsitys, with a handfull of other bikes. There must have been 200+ kids who rode their bikes to school. My commute on my Varsity was 5 miles each way. Made the ride with 2 friends, one on a Varsity & the other on a Le Tour.

Today, the bike lot is almost empty with maybe a dozen krappy Walmart- Target MTB in various stages of disrepair hanging aound. Same thing with the local high school. Yet I'm seeing more & more late teen-early 20 types riding for transport, mostly on beach cruiser variants. That's when my generation shifted to cars. What's going on?

Kabloink

We were required to walk/ride a bike if we lived within a mile of the school back in the 70s. Of course your parents could drive you, but almost none of them did at that time. Currently, I think most kids that don't ride the bus are driven by their parents or other kids if the high school allows them to drive there. The morning drop off queues at the schools usually wrap around the block around here.

Not sure about the early 20 group. Perhaps they are doing it for environmental/health reasons or to save gas. Though its possible they discovered they can't afford a car and insurance with the current economic conditions.

Retro Grouch 

I can tell you that none of the schools in the district that I work for will have a dozen parked bikes. I've seen around 6 at one of the middle schools. The others don't have any. I'm thinking that the schools discourage bicycling to school. For one thing, the streets immediately surrounding the schools are pretty hazardous.

AKRX

Yea, it's bloody pitiful. Me and a friend got into serious mountain biking this year (we're 17), and we're the only ones in our group who can call ourselves mountain bikers. One friend talks big about his riding ability, then either stays home to watch movies or get slaughtered by everyone else on the trail. Another friend refused to wait a week to earn the difference between a quality entry level Giant and a crappy bike from Canadian Tire. Others we've asked to join us are either too lazy (often totally out of shape), or too scared (for cross country???). Everyone's too attached to their comfort zone nowadays.

It IS also the parents, too. Another friend I asked to come with us wasn't allowed to hit the trails with us because he wasn't allowed 5 blocks away from the house on his bike. Really?! He's 15!!! Let go, people!

CommuterRun

They're in the house fighting with the parents over whose next on the latest video game.

BarracksSi

Sheesh! My friends and I used to ride... oh, let's see... (breaks out Google Maps)... at least five miles from home without parental supervision.

(wait... the horse track was only five miles away?? Sure seems farther when you're a kid on a bike.. lol)

spinnaker

When I was a kid we always got plenty of exercise by running from the dinosaurs.

Seriously, when I was a kid (many moons ago) we were never inside during the summer, even when it was raining, most times we would be outside.


Here is how a typical summer day would go.

Get up early, maybe watch a little bit of cartoons while eating breakfast.
BTW If Mom & Dad just bought be new tennys, they would be ready at the foot of the bed the night before.
Jump on the bike ride around the neighborhood till lunch.
Back home for lunch and out on the bike again or maybe a whiffle ball game in the alley. Loxy's yard was an automatic out, three outs if she was home. She was mean and would keep the ball if she got her hands on it.
Back home for dinner, wolf done dinner and back out into the ally for another whiffle ball game.
Once it got dark, a game of hide and go seek. Only later in life did I learn that ennie meanie minnie moe is a scam.

I do still see some kids outside but nothing like when we ere kids.

roadfix

Kis have essentially become fatter and dumber over the generations.

spinnaker

Oh and were one of the first people to mountain bike. We would take our bikes (the regular old fashioned type with coaster brakes) to the top of the hill out in the woods and come careening done the hill.

That and some of my sled riding antics on that same hill, it is a wonder that I am still alive today.

Lebowski

parents are taking all the fun out of being a kid. part of learning and becoming a real person with mental capacity is getting hurt breaking stuff and learning what works. i see kids from my highschool get rides from their parents when they live a block away from school! if i asked for a ride my dad would give me the whole "i got up at 5 am did a paper route walked a bazillion gagillion miles naked uphill both ways in -50 degree weather with mashed potatoes in our shoes to keep us warm then we walked to school 15 miles away everyday" speach.

seriously im glad i grew up when i did. the last great generation... the 90's!

chephy

Actually, TV viewing time is starting to decline, according to some study I read recently. People are ditching TV in favour of video games and social networking sites, since those are more interactive.

Yep, as I said many times, it sucks to be a kid these days. You can't ever be by yourself, you're chauffered everywhere, you're supposed to attend this and that "activity" all the time rather than just play around with your buddies.

The first warm day of spring I did see a bunch of kids around, actually. Quite a few of them were playing in their neighbourhoods. But in many cases they clearly couldn't go past some pretty restrictive boundaries set by their parents. For instance there was this group of kids aged about 10 who were playing ball hockey in a driveway on a really quiet residential street. At some point the ball rolled off the driveway onto the street and the kid who was chasing it stopped at the end of the driveway and started looking for passers-by to hand him the ball that was lying just a few steps from him in the middle of a calm street with no cars anywhere in sight. It was clear the kids were simply not allowed by their parents to step off the sidewalk. (On that same day on that same calm street I also saw a little girl on a bike who pointed at me and asked her mother: "Mommy, how come this lady is riding her bike ON THE ROAD?" The worship and fear of The Car in our society is really really unhealthy and out of proportion, what can I say.)

The whole society - parents, teachers, et cetera et cetera are obsessed with "safety" and worried about kids getting hurt. Worried so much that they actually discourage kids from going out and playing. And then we wonder about child obesity?..

girljen

That makes me sad.
When I was a kid (which wasn't that long ago, I'm only 26), once school was out for the summer, the side streets were clogged with little kids on bicycles. I used to spend hours riding around the yard, riding up and down the block, riding to the park, and so on, just for the fun of it!

Luckily, there is a skate park just down the street from my house. I plan on showing my daughter that the big kids can do cool tricks on their BMXs, and hopefully, encouraging her to ride for fun. She'll also see (and later follow) Mom and Dad as we run errands on our bicycles.

I'd much rather deal with a few broken bones than an obese young person who doesn't know how to be a kid.

maddyfish

At my kids school, on a decent day there may be 25-30 bikes. We have 387 k-5 at our school. We have no busing whatsoever. During decent weather I'd guess around 1/2 the kids walk. Oh and by the way, our school only has about 12 parking spots. And 1/2 of my department(including me) never drives a car to work.