Originally Posted by
noimagination
Seems to me that, whatever it is, "good bike handling" skills are in steep decline, just going by the number of posts regarding basic skills (riding out of the saddle, descending, even stuff like fixing flats and changing gears). Not meaning to channel my inner curmudgeon, but I don't think kids live on their bikes the way we did when I was young (4 - 13 or so). When I was a kid, bikes were toys, transportation, sporting equipment, vehicles for exploration, weapons (on occasion), etc. Nothing teaches "handling" like chasing your brothers and friends all over town on a bike, trying to conduct running snowball fights on your bike, riding down anything short of vertical, trying to ram your brother's bike with yours (while not damaging anyone/any bike), etc.
I think it's a lot harder as an adult to develop the skills we acquired organically as kids by just acting like the idiots we were.
You can call it a kid issue if you want but the fact is that more people are riding indoors. Every spring around here for decades we would always laugh during the first few outside rides: "Looks like Dave has his trainer handling skills going". Now with Zwift and so many people riding indoors because of the pandemic it will be a mass epidemic of poorly handling bikes when we finally get back outside.
Going back as far as I remember there's always been someone saying, "oh that's because we don't do ____ anymore. Back in my day people did that and they could handle their bikes." In reality there have always been people that can't handle their bikes. No matter what they do or how much training they get.
I remember in 1988 learning the term "Squirrel" from the VHS tape the 7-Eleven team put out called "Cycling for Success"....."squirrels" are nothing new and they will never go away.