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Comment by CrossVR | Hacker News Reader

If you're in a suburb what else is there to do? Going to any interesting spots to hang out with friends involve asking your parents to bring you there with the family car and then arranging a strict timetable on when to pick you up again.

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> If you're in a suburb what else is there to do?

i mean, i agree with you, theres nothing to do anymore. but surely there was less to do in the 50s? if youre poor, theres never much to do really.

> but surely there was less to do in the 50s?

I think just being able to get together with a couple other kids means that, even lacking videogames or boardgames or whatever, means that the opportunities available abound. Kids are infinitely creative and very good at inventing games out of any situation you throw them into. Give them two sticks and a piece of string and they'll turn it into a game of "don't let the string hit the ground" or something.

But, alone, yes I agree there was far less to do.

In the 50s the suburbs were new and inhabited mainly by families who also had kids. By the time I came around those people still lived in most houses and they were quite old in the neighborhood with few, if any families with kids my age. Quite a contrast to the stories I was told about my parents upbringing in the suburbs, where they could collect a dozen plus kids going door to door down the block.

In the 70s and 80s if you wanted to play video games you would go to an arcade and meet other kids there. Where are those arcades now? Or you might go to and hang out at a mall, but those are few and far in between now too.

The fact that adults don't have third places anymore affects kids just as much, maybe even more.

It doesn't help that you can do a lot more indoors now, and the indoors has gotten more addictive. So relative to that, there's even less you can do outdoors.

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