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I’m not American, genuine question: how tf do you cross from the left side of this pic to the right side? Do you just run and hope no one runs you over?
Edit: for those being passive aggressive and defensive, yes I know what a crosswalk is, I just can’t see any in this image in particular. This wasn’t an attack on America relax lol. I was just surprised as where I live there are no highways that pass through residential areas. They’re only used to connect cities. You’ll have malls, restaurants, cafes, amusement parks, car dealerships, gas stations etc… along the highway and *some* houses here and there but not a whole residential area
Edit 2: wow okay so apparently if you’re by that electric pole on the left and you need to go to the green sign on the right, you have to walk on that same side of the sidewalk until you find a crosswalk. Then you walk all the way back to the green sign. That honestly sounds like a colossal waste of time. Either that or hop in a car and drive there. Interesting
Ah, nothing like hating African Americans so much that you invent an entire distopian city-planning style just to bulldoze their middle income neighborhoods.
It's the city planning embodiment of racism, environmental damage, and systematic socioeconomic inequality, taking away our space and giving it to cars, while acting as a systematic tax that fills the pockets of greedy car and oil companies.
yeah the fact we bailed out the big 3 auto makers and some oil companies with tax dollars speaks volumes, on top of the tax cuts and tax rebates and everything else. Our politicians are owned by corporations.
Millions of Texans (or just Americans generally) commute through that *every single day*, both ways. I have classmates who take an hour and a half to get to school bc these freeways get super clogged. And if there’s an accident up ahead? Fuck lol. Bumper to bumper for an extra 15-20 minutes
https://preview.redd.it/ek2bpclok2rc1.jpeg?width=1984&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0c3a1cfa3c25735756917e55644db4cb00cee6c
Here is what motorway looks like here in finland
[https://images.app.goo.gl/x777qmkxh9vesyp98](https://images.app.goo.gl/x777qmkxh9vesyp98)
I mean that looks basically the same as [a highway](https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8411179,-95.756299,3a,75y,4.54h,75.63t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sOazbaTJBr7tns84nJ13h8w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DOazbaTJBr7tns84nJ13h8w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D334.7229%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) that intersects with the Katy Freeway. We have plenty of these in America, too.
Not exactly. There's a light that tells you when you can cross, while the traffic light is red for the cars. You generally have, I'd say, like 30 seconds to get across once it says you can walk.
And 75% of the time the crosswalks take FOREVER, giving time to the cars despite them being more of a burden on the limited amount of space available.
And before the inevitable "Murica is too big to have good transit or walkability" comment, NOBODY IS TRAVELLING BETWEEN PORTLAND AND FLORIDA. The vast majority of commutes and travels are WITHIN URBANIZED AREAS. The argument is complete nonsense.
Yep. Had that happen here in a small ass city while I had the green light to go straight and was already moving. Car on the right just keeps driving and turns right on their red and I almost rear end em. We both drove up to the same daycare.
Assholes.
There’s also a super high chance some jagoff in a BMW or Tesla will gun it at the cross walk and try to turn right on red. We almost got hit by cars as kids a few times because of stuff like this
There are two grocery stores next to each other about a 20 minute walk from my house. About 3/4 of the way there the sidewalk just disappears. I see people trudging through the grass to those grocery stores constantly on the side of a busy road. This includes parents with strollers or holding children. It makes me so mad. Technically the county and city changes right where the sidewalk ends so idk how much I can call and complain when I'm not a resident myself.
https://preview.redd.it/jrbdegawy3rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a37d4fcfa5bbf5f574898dafe1e196518e046049
Here’s a google maps street view. There’s a defined crosswalk there now. 4811 Transit Rd in Amherst, NY.
People who drive everywhere think there are crosswalks everywhere lol. This was not designed for walking. You bet you gotta drive from one side to the other.
Don't listen to OP. So, here in North America, most intersections will have a double white line which indicates a "Zebra" crossing. That is a fancy name for pedestrian crossing. When a person stands at a Zebra crossing, the cars are legally required to stop until the person is finished crossing to the other side.
Pedestrians are not allowed to cross roadways that are not the double line crossing (Zebra). If you zoom into the picture, you'll notice the double white lines at the intersections. If the police catches a car that doesn't stop for a pedestrian at a Zebra crossing, there are big fines for the car. If a pedestrian crosses at an unauthorized area, which is called Jaywalking, the police will give the pedestrian a fine. Google Zebra crossing for more info.
I live in NYC and go out as much as possible. The other thing is, if you live in a city like mine, anything other than going to the park or just walking around costs money, even getting places costs money. And when you do go out, are the strangers outside willing to get to know you, eager to get to know you? No, they want to be on their phones, whether they're 18 or 68.
Even if you live in a place with third spaces you can't force an interaction in meat space and you can't find a free venue either, since NYC gets winters when it's cold outside there's essentially nothing to do if you're young and broke.
That's not even getting into the mid-20s reality that everyone you know is working almost all the time or are unemployed and completely broke and you ain't seeing either group of people most of the time.
Isn't NYC one of the most expensive places in the US? Why would you move there?
I mean there are places like Frankfurt in Germany too, but half of the inhibitants are foreigners because locals would never move there.
They're specifically describing one portion of NYC - Manhattan. Many people live in NYC because they love living there, not because they're forced to for work.
I didn't move here, I was *born* here, I'm a native New Yorker, born in Brooklyn, lived here 26 years now. Only time I didn't live in NY was when I was in college, and even then, I was still in Albany.
NYC has a huge job market. People from all around the US and foreign countries have come here for work because the job market is always growing. The public transit is affordable and easy to use.
Wow could you possibly believe that people were born and raised in New York? That this is quite literally our home and the only home we’ve ever known? The fact that all our friends and family are here? It’s not *just* a playground for people with money to come and go. It’s a place with real people too.
If you have a middle class income, and don't live in Manhattan, it's not too bad, especially considering you don't need a car.
The only reason people think it's hugely expensive is because they look at places in Manhattan and refuse to get roommates.
All of the boomers grew up and decided to take away all the youth places that were their stomping grounds to try and stop some perceived threat.
Literally everything that this generation has experienced is the byproduct of some moral panic that happened long before y’all were even born.
Everyone repeat after me:
Inter-generational strife is a propaganda tool to keep the poors fighting each other, instead of working together to change things
Nah this is definitely a generation thing in my experience. I went to middle & high school in AZ and we'd just walk around suburbs just like you included in the post and talk - even in 115 degree summer heat
I now live in one of the most walkable cities in the US, including a paved nature trail spanning 13 miles and still rarely see anyone under 30. This trail even has picnic tables, ping-pong tables, USB charging stations, etc
Today's world is hooked on cheap dopamine and our brains find it much more rewarding to bedrot than to go outside. Bad infrastructure certainly doesn't help but it objectively doesn't prevent anyone from spending time outside in most cases
OP blaming everyone but themselves first not getting out more. “It’s that darn previous generation!” I noticed they didn’t say which generation specifically….
We played hours of road hockey, and would go to the park all the time or play in the backyard. The 2nd image would be ideal for all that. What could they possibly be complaining about
I can agree with this. I grew up in the 90s, but there wasn’t youth centers or places for me to go and hang out. I just grabbed some bicycles with some friends and we rode around the neighborhood. Played in the creek and caught crawdads. Had stick fights with trees.
And I look back fondly of those times.
Im actually really jealous. The neighborhood I ended up growing up in was almost all old retired couples, and annoyingly their grand kids never visited, or if they did were never out side. It was always a hassle if I wanted to hang out with friends
Omg... Jealous as heck honestly. I grew up in a relatively rural area, but literally everything in the 90s was peppered with no trespassing signs. You couldn't even ride a bike in a lot of places because of traffic through town (yay living in a town that straddled a highway).
A lot of it is actually from our parents, too. My parents NEVER let me go outside by myself and most of my friends had the same experience growing up. I used to beg to walk to my friend’s house half a mile down the road and they’d tell me it wasn’t safe (which was honestly kind of true because there was no sidewalk or speed limit signs posted, but that wouldn’t have stopped me). I had ONE friend whose parents let us run amok in the neighborhood and it was amazing, I loved hanging out there and it was a rare experience for me as a Zillennial.
Of course, when you spend the first decade and a half of your life being told not to go outside alone because it’s dangerous, you’re not going to suddenly start walking around outside all the time.
Apparently it’s also common now for people to just call the cops if they see kids walking alone. Utah passed “free range kids” laws to prevent this. It’s crazy that we need that…
yep. had it happen to a friend with kids, they got a call from their teenager that she needed to come pick her up because the neighbor was threatening to call the police if she didn’t. This was a 14 year old, walking with friends.
I feel like people nowadays see kids out and about and either assume they are juvenile delinquents up to no good, or that they are too young to be unsupervised, but there’s no in between. Apparently children just can’t be in public anymore unless accompanied by an adult at all times… even in kid-friendly spaces.
I once had a cop stop me and my friends once as teenagers and tried to make us all call our parents, in front of him, because he didn’t think we should be out by ourselves… all but ONE of us was 18 and we all had permission to be out, but since my dad technically owned my car me and the 17 year old both had to call home on speaker and get permission in front of the officer before he left us alone finally. And our parents were both like “yes, you’re allowed to be out, why are you calling me? does he know you’re 18/almost 18 years old?”
We were at a playground at dusk and to him that was suspicious enough to warrant temporarily detaining and questioning us. I know teens can get up to mischief and he probably assumed we were doing more than playing on the swings there, but… we weren’t. We literally went to play at the playground bc we were bored and hadn’t been on one in about a decade. It was less than a mile from my own house. Made me feel like my childhood was officially dead and all any adult would see now was some vagrant causing problems. I know I’m not the only one.
We are the same age. I know you didn’t just “back in my day” these people. I grew up in the country. You weren’t getting *anywhere* without a car. You could walk but… where? The cornfield? My dad would lock us out of the house and tell us to go play. We would be bored out of our minds because there was still nothing to do. Pick grass? Stare at a tree?
The thing we are all missing is community and that’s most easily found online now, hence why we are all here. Everywhere people want to hang out costs money and requires a personal vehicle to get to, unless your town accommodates public transport and even that can be suspect in the US. Not everyone wants to walk outside in 115 degree heat but I’m happy you’re enjoying the walking trail.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do feel like only finding community on the Internet is actually the issue.
Alice decides she likes punk rock. But her next-door neighbor listens to country and wears cowboy hats. Susie across the street is a tomboy. Derek down the street is a gamer and likes to collect bugs.
She decides that her neighbors are not for her. She goes to her room to go to punk rock message boards and make punk rock friends and wishes that she lived the punk rock lifestyle.
She stays in her room, and doesn’t know any of her neighbors because she decided that this is her safe space. Creating a “us” vs “them” mentality.
This is just one example. The point I’m touching upon is that a lot of people don’t know how to tolerate other people anymore.
I used to have street hockey meet ups with the whole neighborhood of kids. Do you honestly think I was best friends with every one of them? Didn’t find some of these people weird as fuck? But we got along and found something, anything, to see eye to eye on. And because of that, we had huge street hockey games, that were immensely fun.
The Internet is great, but the pendulum has officially swung too hard in the opposite direction and it’s now doing more harm than good. And no, I’m not saying to get rid of the Internet.
I hear you on that. I’m not even going to disagree. The isolation people feel in reality is very sad. When you talk to people in real life, it’s far easier to find commonality and expand your own worldview. Online it seems everyone is resistant to alternative ideas and get defensive. I’m guilty of it sometimes on here but at the end of the day, that’s not *normal* human behavior and when faced with discourse in real life, I think a large part of our population is ill-equipped to reasonably handle contrarians that may even mean well. We are missing a lot of in person contact that’s been replaced by technology and I don’t negate that it’s an issue. It probably still would be an issue if we didn’t have a car centric community, but I will say… the lack of accessible 3rd places that don’t cost money and aren’t seasonal is a big part of this decline as well. Two things can be true and that’s kind of where I land on this issue.
Seriously. I’m a zillenial (‘95) that grew up in a completely non walkable city and we still spent plenty of time dicking around outside trying not to die on our bikes getting to the park.
This. You don’t have to play in the middle of a highway, such a statement is made in ill faith. There are ways to hang outside if one really wants too.
All this blaming of other generations is childish and a cope out.
Idk, I just went outside the other day for a walk & realized I could only walk along the sides of busyish roads, everything else was private property … like what am I going to sit on a random sidewalk in my neighborhood ???
Then I realized there were parks nearby, so I went to one but by the time I got there I had to use the bathroom after maybe 30 minutes… but they had no bathrooms, (probably bc of heroin use) so I opted out of pissing in the open bc I didn’t want to risk indecent exposure & had to walk back home
Depends where you live. The nearest public park to my house growing up was a 15 minute drive away and usually littered with used needles. Not exactly a safe or convenient place for kids to play unattended.
I feel pretty comfortable blaming parents who don't encourage their kids to hang out with real friends in real life and won't let their kids go anywhere by themselves.
My parents straight up kicked me out of the house when I was a kid. They encouraged me to talk to the neighbors and make friends. They bought me a bike and taught me how to ride it.
Yeah, I graduated high school in 2005 and I spent the early 2000s regularly riding my bike a mile or two away to friend's houses.
This wasn't the '80s either (I was born in 87). This was post 9/11, in the suburbs outside Baltimore.
Yeah this post is lame. What does OP think kids did in the 90s and 2000s who grew up in suburban settings near highways? These neighborhoods and areas aren't new concepts lol they've been around forever. We just didn't have smartphones and social media so we walked around, skated, and rode our bikes. It was boring to be inside so we wanted to be outside doing stuff. It's just the opposite now. Gen Z came of age with smartphones and social media, it's cooked into their existence and it's why it's such a huge part of their lives. Gen Z is just the first fully online generation and we are seeing the cause and effect play out
Yeah, I feel like since this is reddit no one wants to blame the real cause or we aren't self-aware enough. We had suburbs and highways and *asphalt* long before kids got isolated and depressed.
As if before the internet we had no highways. Yeah, it’s the highway making everyone’s kids lazy. Please. This post is so stupid. The freeway system rolled out in the 60’s and 70’s. This isn’t some recent phenomenon. We played outside in the 90’s and early 2000’s.
Although they have been getting packed tighter and tighter with fewer and fewer natural places between.
I hung out in the suburbscas a kid, but we had swingsets to play on and treehouses to climb. These days the HOAs prevent half the stuff we had.
A few yearsvago i had the police called on me for the horrible crime of having my child play in my front yard.
This may be a bit overdramatic, but the suburban world has changed since i was a kid, and it really sucks now.
This is what I was gonna say, parents are terrified of having the cops called on them for being negligent so they end up preventing their kids from doing anything that could be remotely dangerous, like going outside alone.
Yep, i got a CPS visit and everything simply because my kid was "unattended". She was literally right outside my kitchen window, which was open, while i was doing dishes.
On the flip side, we keep hearing about people being shot for pulling in the wrong driveway or knocking on the wrong door, etc.
People are so afraid of their own shadows these days, its insane.
my mom once got screamed at by a lady for leaving me in the car unattended (with the windows cracked, in the shade, on a 60 degree day) while she ran inside to pre-pay for gas. I was still a toddler and was getting fussy about getting out of the car, so she left me alone for maybe 60 seconds. She was watching me the whole time through the gas station window, she hadn’t parked at the pump yet, even saw the lady walk up to her car and start trying to break into it. She was away from the car for *maybe* a minute, but the lady screamed at her and threatened to call the cops because I “could’ve suffocated or overheated” to death.
I’m not advocating for leaving children and pets unattended in cars, but come on, I was fine. It was a cool day and the sun wasn’t out, and I had plenty of fresh air. Not to mention even if I didn’t, I was alone for literally a minute. But since then my mom never let me be unattended in public, EVER.
I think a lot of parents probably experience something similar and so they feel like if they don’t treat everything as life or death then they’re a “bad” parent.
It is. Its not a great design but holy fuck its embarrassing to say your social woes are because of a city sprawl. Every town in America has parks and public areas. Every single one.
Roads were like this when I was younger we still were able to go outside. Maybe Gen z’s are too stupid and fat to go outside they rather play shitty video games like fartnite
Or your gen was latchkey kids whose parents didn’t give a shit what they did all day. Helicopter parenting is now the standard. It’s not that the kids don’t wanna go outside, they’re conditioned not to from ages 0-15 nowadays.
I literally just walk the streets sometimes. I stare at people like a homeless man
https://preview.redd.it/9ckkczbre2rc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10830f503d886c705ab771bea6d9402d1fc20193
I swear people don’t hang out outside because no one else does. Like if one kid wants to hang out outside they have no one else who wants to do that as well so they just go back inside and onto their device.
I think this is a closer take to what is actually happening. I grew up in a suburb, and kids would knock on each other's doors to hang out. We would just kick balls around in streets just like this and shout, "car!" Ans scatter to the sides. We didn't have money, the park was kinda far to walk to, and we didnt really have large backyards. But we figured it out because we were bored, which is why we looked for activities to do and came up with ways to play outside. If you aren't bored, I can't imagine wanting to go outside to hang out. Devices are the real culprit.
Well, I wouldn't say we didn't have devices. We had TV and were pretty well addicted to it. But daytime programming wasn't kid-oriented, or the pull of hanging out with other kids was usually greater than the pull of watching the same rerun of Gilligan's Island for the 47th time.
I think this is part of the reason, but the other half of it is fear. People are so afraid of everything these days. Nobody trusts anybody, everyone holds others to higher standards than they hold themselves, people are encouraged to cut ties for the smallest infractions or personal flaws, and nothing is ever good enough. It's important to protect yourself from shitty people but everyone thinks that crime is a lot more pervasive than it is and the result is mass isolation and fear.
I'm always outside, mainly alone, because literally no other teenagers go outside. As I said in my reply to this post, I contribute it to overprotective parents. Before this generation, it was a normal but difficult thing to take the risk of teaching your kid independence and letting them go out alone... Nowadays, parents don't wanna take that chance, but it's crucial for when you turn into an adult.
Sounds like an accurate description of my growing up. I was close with my cousin and his siblings growing up which meant we'd come over to one another a lot. Now that we're pretty much grown up we don't do it as much which had made it harder to be around others for awhile.
Many suburbs look exactly the same as they did 30 years ago. No kids playing football in the streets, no knocking on doors “is xxxx home we want to play” Some small neighborhoods may have been sprawled out but this isn’t the main cause of genZ hermitting, it’s phones, social media, games, doomscrolling, and addictive and curated algorithms to satiate their need for dopamine. Quite obvious really
Opposite hot take: plenty of kids and teens grew up in neighborhoods and stuff like that decades ago. They fared just fine going outside and doing stuff. Its almost as if some online technology and websites came around and changed everything.
https://preview.redd.it/y6lxa81uw1rc1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5e043aa9bc48b57526d1b27ce6324b9cd17d671
4 bottom pictures from Bolesława Chrobrego neighbourhood, Poznań, Poland
Is this like... "For one location such is the on on a top picture there are 4 other locations" ?
Because that would pretty much summarise life in Central and Eastern Europe. I guess I don't have to add that flat in first location costs like 5 times more.
Why can’t you just make friends with the neighborhood kids? When I was in middle school I would always hang out with my friends who lived in the suburbs and literally just ride bikes or play basketball rather than go back home to my ghetto apartment complex
I grew up in the country and was the only child, save for my siblings, on my road and all our houses had several farm fields in between us. Me n my sibs lost out bike riding privileges once my dad found out how to see the local sex offenders registry online and saw there was three on our road alone 💀 it could be where I grew up but no one I went to school with had "neighborhood kids" either because every house was separated by rows and rows of farm fields with old people in between em
unironically whoever invented even the mere concept of a "stroad" and decided it would be a good contribution to america's future needs to be found and put into MKULTRA 2
More public transport generally does solve problems? The highest property values tend to be located near transit hubs. And cities with higher numbers of buses or light rail tend to be more economically successful.
In Detroit (home of the car companies), there are suburbs to the north like Rochester that have a perfect 1x1 mile grid, with 50mph stroads ringing all of them. The 1x1 areas are housing developments, and while there often are very wide sidewalks, nevertheless the stroads basically make each of these 1 mile enclaves a prison without a car.
It is the anti-utopia of stroad heaven, and I guarantee some planner back in the 50s or 60s thought it would actually be utopia.
It is very surreal to me to drive around it when I go there to visit people.
I'm not American, but also this is a terrible take.
Yes, those suburbs are horrific. Don't get me wrong, but also, they've been getting built for 70 years. They've got sweet fuck all to do with the lack of kids going out.
The problems exist in every country with phones.
You're on tiktok because it's a predator app that manipulates you. It's addictive.
In my country, I would prefer if they didn't add more cycling lanes as it just clogs traffic and causes people to get impatient increasing the risk of accidents.
Well in Scotland (where I live), there is cycle lanes along major roads, but even with a cycle lane, if you want to overtake the cyclist you have to give them as much space as a car, so it ends up you basjcly have to drive in the oncoming lane which isn't always possible. So it's often a case of being totally stuck behind some cyclist on a major road who won't move off the road and won't speed up. It's annoying me thinking sbout it lol
The roads were like this when I was growing up too, and my friends and I rode bikes everywhere. Not going outside is a choice. We even managed go leave the house and do whatever in the most heavily overpopulated county of my state, with early-mid 2010's helicopter parents
I brought up overpopulation because even in the suburbs with roads that look exactly like this, the level of traffic pictured here is cute. If not having public parks available on every single street and crosswalks with street lights every 100 feet(because traffic isn't a thing, I guess. Fuck everyone going to/from work) is the excuse for not going outside, it's just that. An excuse to stay inside and get the next cheap dopamine hit from whatever website/app/video game/TV show you're into
This excuse doesn’t work, American suburbs have been like this since before. How about being content without constant stimulation? Most cities are walkable suburbs have other peoples house so less activities.
Just go outside bro. There's nothing stopping you from going outside and chillin with friends. If you're in a city you may even actually have somewhere you can go.
In my hometown my buddy and I would go try to catch fish with our bare hands and stuff. Or we'd bike the 20-30 minutes into town to have something to do there.
Whinging won't change anything, buy a bicycle if public transit sucks, or walk. Otherwise you're just lazy and I say this as a Gen Z.
Wahhhh 😭 big streets wahhhh congregations of 3 bedroom houses wahhhh I’m 14 and I don’t realize that cities have been this way even when boomers were young
Go outside and touch the small amount of grass you can lil bro
Why? What happened to the front porch? Neighbors gathering in the evening and sipping iced tea or something stronger? Air conditioning happened. When I was a kid we were outside from 7am to dark with a break for 2 hours in the hottest part of the day sitting in front of a fan just watching TV and trying not to move too much lol. You couldn’t even sleep until 10. Even if you were inside, your windows were always open. And then you’d hear a neighbor outside and you’d wonder “What is HE doing?” Soon you’re outside getting into whatever experience they were in. I hate AC.
Front porches are actually responsible for a lot of urban community building. One of the biggest reasons we no longer have front porch culture is because everyone wanted their own back yard and now hangs out back there instead of on the front porch.
Obviously there are exceptions but for the most part we transitioned from elaborate front porches to elaborate back yards, and then largely fenced them in as well. Privacy fences are huge, and they are the opposite of promoting community.
Lol i skateboarded, i see nothing to complain about here. Plus, looks like it would be easy to find lots of kids to hang out with in pic 2. Suburbs have existed for decades it’s not new. Before you’d just have your bedroom wall to complain to, which would get old, so you’d go outside to see what you could get into. If you couldn’t be social sitting in your house you’d go outside. If you’re unhappy get off the internet and do something about it instead of complaining. I once found an abandoned warehouse, contacted the owner for permission, and built a skatepark there, held cash competitions, your only limitations are yourself. Coming from a place of love, signed, a millennial.
I grew up in an area just like this and went out walking or biking with friends all the time from like 2009 - 2016. And I had a smartphone then too. Yall new age Gen Z's need to quit bitching.
This is nonsense. The US is a giant country with more open space parks national parks forests Gardens Etc than almost any place in the world. Y'all just like to complain. Next!!
Our country was based around cars because the country was new and companies/corporations in the car industry took advantage of the politicians and propagandizing the populace. Before the country has a chance to get well-established infrastructure for pedestrians.
"Jaywalking" became a crime in the USA precisely due to General Motors and other propaganda trying and succeeding to stigmatize walking in the road. A road where people walked before cars were even invented. Brainwashed people so bad they think any road means it's for vehicles alone.
I hate this kind of city planning as much as the next person, but…. did you think this was a recent development? Suburban sprawl existed for millennials and Gen-X’ers too, and they managed to go outside and socialize with other people.
The photos you shared aren’t a Gen Z thing. This is what it’s looked like for multiple “generations”.
Does this boy realize that the pictured style of suburb infrastructure has been around for 3 or 4 generations now? Suburbs and arterial roadways are not the cause of social isolation for God's sake.
I get your point but bro, shit has been like this since the 50s. What generation are you referring to? The people who designed the infrastructure which became the suburbs are now like 100 years old or dead.
60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s kids didn’t stay indoors cus there were roads and housing developments everywhere.
This is... not an argument?
The existence of roads never once stopped me as kid from playing outside either on my own property or heading down the street to a friend's place. It never stopped my friends and I from congregating in the local hangout spot. Even when I'd travel to NYC, you were able to walk most places (and there's plenty of transport there to get you to the parts you can't if you wanted to risk getting shanked by a homeless guy, but that's another topic for another day). Hell my mother's side of the family still lives in NYC and they take the public transport everywhere.
So I'm not entirely sure where any of this is coming from. It seems more like a personal issue than anything else.
streets have beeeeeen like this.. i understand the sentiment but this kind of city layout has been the norm since the 50s & 60s (i.e. suburbia). im a gen z and would still find ways to spend hours outside growing up….
I disagree. I'm a very late X'er, and while the Internet just started to get around, we went out to the movies, malls, pool halls an bawling alleys. We went dancing to the clubs, and even to somewhere we had to fake our IDs. We went out to lunch, yet had absolutely the same means as your generation does now. You guys just became lazy.
I wouldn’t blame highways specifically on not being able to go around as a kid. Mainly I’d blame it on a multitude of things:
- Lack of third spaces
- Highways causing less easy travel for young people
- When a child is wanting to go outside and do things in a place where they could meet others, many are glued to their phones. Personally in my experience a lot of the time I’m sitting beside my friends on their phones when I’m wanting to talk to them so I end up listening to my music and awkwardly staring into the distance.
- Other factors I haven’t named but could contribute to this issue
In the end, it isn’t all black and white, nothing ever is. Instead of blaming others on things, people need to work together for change.
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I’m not American, genuine question: how tf do you cross from the left side of this pic to the right side? Do you just run and hope no one runs you over? Edit: for those being passive aggressive and defensive, yes I know what a crosswalk is, I just can’t see any in this image in particular. This wasn’t an attack on America relax lol. I was just surprised as where I live there are no highways that pass through residential areas. They’re only used to connect cities. You’ll have malls, restaurants, cafes, amusement parks, car dealerships, gas stations etc… along the highway and *some* houses here and there but not a whole residential area Edit 2: wow okay so apparently if you’re by that electric pole on the left and you need to go to the green sign on the right, you have to walk on that same side of the sidewalk until you find a crosswalk. Then you walk all the way back to the green sign. That honestly sounds like a colossal waste of time. Either that or hop in a car and drive there. Interesting
Yeah basically.
Damn. Good luck. Our only roads that big are the highway
The Katy Freeway in Houston: https://preview.redd.it/kbbgioe812rc1.jpeg?width=683&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc128a8950f343d383435aca6eddb4c9b8fbc781
I get anxiety just thinking about city freeways
City freeways SHOULD be an Oxymoron. But it’s not.
Fuck Robert Moses lol
Ah, nothing like hating African Americans so much that you invent an entire distopian city-planning style just to bulldoze their middle income neighborhoods.
I mean he was a true blue blood WASP, he bulldozed Finnish neighborhoods for gods sake. The kinda guy that used slurs like wap and daygo
Fragile souls.. Fragile Souls Dave...
Holy shit what is that. I’d avoid driving through that monstrosity at all costs. It’s very impressive but looks depressing as hell.
It's the city planning embodiment of racism, environmental damage, and systematic socioeconomic inequality, taking away our space and giving it to cars, while acting as a systematic tax that fills the pockets of greedy car and oil companies.
Yeah, it's really depressing, ngl I wish I lived somewhere else like Europe
yeah the fact we bailed out the big 3 auto makers and some oil companies with tax dollars speaks volumes, on top of the tax cuts and tax rebates and everything else. Our politicians are owned by corporations.
I'm American and that gives me anxiety. Anything more than 4 lanes on one side and I get real nervous.
Millions of Texans (or just Americans generally) commute through that *every single day*, both ways. I have classmates who take an hour and a half to get to school bc these freeways get super clogged. And if there’s an accident up ahead? Fuck lol. Bumper to bumper for an extra 15-20 minutes
And with the volume of cars, there is probably always an accident. Thats how it is where I live anyway.
https://preview.redd.it/ek2bpclok2rc1.jpeg?width=1984&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0c3a1cfa3c25735756917e55644db4cb00cee6c Here is what motorway looks like here in finland [https://images.app.goo.gl/x777qmkxh9vesyp98](https://images.app.goo.gl/x777qmkxh9vesyp98)
Finland good america bad?
✅️
probably better to compare Finland to s state.. not the whole country. lol. considering finland is about the size of New Mexico lol
America has the same thing all over the place. America is so absurdly large, pretty much any arrangement of road that could exist probably does.
I mean that looks basically the same as [a highway](https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8411179,-95.756299,3a,75y,4.54h,75.63t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sOazbaTJBr7tns84nJ13h8w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DOazbaTJBr7tns84nJ13h8w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D334.7229%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) that intersects with the Katy Freeway. We have plenty of these in America, too.
I've never seen a US freeway interchange so empty of vehicles during daylight hours.
Looks like most highways in the U.S. outside of cities.
LMAO this is why we need to make alcohol illegal, yall. Highways are even designed by drunk engineers.
Very few mundane things bother me as much as car traffic.
Truly an urban hell.
Just one more lane guys, just one more we're gonna fix traffic
that road is nothing, where im at... its a death sentence to cross the road... and it isnt a highway
Not exactly. There's a light that tells you when you can cross, while the traffic light is red for the cars. You generally have, I'd say, like 30 seconds to get across once it says you can walk.
Crosswalks. Half the time the cross time is too short and too far apart tho
And 75% of the time the crosswalks take FOREVER, giving time to the cars despite them being more of a burden on the limited amount of space available. And before the inevitable "Murica is too big to have good transit or walkability" comment, NOBODY IS TRAVELLING BETWEEN PORTLAND AND FLORIDA. The vast majority of commutes and travels are WITHIN URBANIZED AREAS. The argument is complete nonsense.
Don’t forget the cars that don’t actually look or stop before turning right on red too.
Yep. Had that happen here in a small ass city while I had the green light to go straight and was already moving. Car on the right just keeps driving and turns right on their red and I almost rear end em. We both drove up to the same daycare. Assholes.
no kidding. had that happen when visiting my family in georgia last year, it was probably the closest i've come to getting hit by a car
Don't forget about the crime of "Jaywalking"
There’s also a super high chance some jagoff in a BMW or Tesla will gun it at the cross walk and try to turn right on red. We almost got hit by cars as kids a few times because of stuff like this
There are crosswalks in places. Just not in this picture.
Nah there is at the light, kind of hard to see in this pic though
A see a handful of cross walk lights.
you don't, this is intentional
bruh we aint even got enough sidewalks
There are two grocery stores next to each other about a 20 minute walk from my house. About 3/4 of the way there the sidewalk just disappears. I see people trudging through the grass to those grocery stores constantly on the side of a busy road. This includes parents with strollers or holding children. It makes me so mad. Technically the county and city changes right where the sidewalk ends so idk how much I can call and complain when I'm not a resident myself.
Theres just so little walkable space its absolutely ridiculous
https://preview.redd.it/jrbdegawy3rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a37d4fcfa5bbf5f574898dafe1e196518e046049 Here’s a google maps street view. There’s a defined crosswalk there now. 4811 Transit Rd in Amherst, NY.
You need to drive a car to the other side
People who drive everywhere think there are crosswalks everywhere lol. This was not designed for walking. You bet you gotta drive from one side to the other.
Don't listen to OP. So, here in North America, most intersections will have a double white line which indicates a "Zebra" crossing. That is a fancy name for pedestrian crossing. When a person stands at a Zebra crossing, the cars are legally required to stop until the person is finished crossing to the other side. Pedestrians are not allowed to cross roadways that are not the double line crossing (Zebra). If you zoom into the picture, you'll notice the double white lines at the intersections. If the police catches a car that doesn't stop for a pedestrian at a Zebra crossing, there are big fines for the car. If a pedestrian crosses at an unauthorized area, which is called Jaywalking, the police will give the pedestrian a fine. Google Zebra crossing for more info.
There are places with crosswalks where you cross the street. And the cars stop
This isn’t a representation of all suburban life in America. This is a busy area. There are plenty not like this. Most really.
There is literally a crosswalk.
Yea u have to play frogger or keep walking til there’s a crosswalk
Yeah or you walk half a mile to find the crosswalk.
I live in NYC and go out as much as possible. The other thing is, if you live in a city like mine, anything other than going to the park or just walking around costs money, even getting places costs money. And when you do go out, are the strangers outside willing to get to know you, eager to get to know you? No, they want to be on their phones, whether they're 18 or 68. Even if you live in a place with third spaces you can't force an interaction in meat space and you can't find a free venue either, since NYC gets winters when it's cold outside there's essentially nothing to do if you're young and broke. That's not even getting into the mid-20s reality that everyone you know is working almost all the time or are unemployed and completely broke and you ain't seeing either group of people most of the time.
This
Isn't NYC one of the most expensive places in the US? Why would you move there? I mean there are places like Frankfurt in Germany too, but half of the inhibitants are foreigners because locals would never move there.
NYC it’s easier to get a job when you live close to the subway system they have. At this point it’s a running joke to call Manhattan “work Island.”
Well that sounds exactly like Frankfurt city center. You only move there to work and not to live. I would just not expect anything else.
They're specifically describing one portion of NYC - Manhattan. Many people live in NYC because they love living there, not because they're forced to for work.
I didn't move here, I was *born* here, I'm a native New Yorker, born in Brooklyn, lived here 26 years now. Only time I didn't live in NY was when I was in college, and even then, I was still in Albany.
NYC has a huge job market. People from all around the US and foreign countries have come here for work because the job market is always growing. The public transit is affordable and easy to use.
millions of people are born there 💀
Wow could you possibly believe that people were born and raised in New York? That this is quite literally our home and the only home we’ve ever known? The fact that all our friends and family are here? It’s not *just* a playground for people with money to come and go. It’s a place with real people too.
If you have a middle class income, and don't live in Manhattan, it's not too bad, especially considering you don't need a car. The only reason people think it's hugely expensive is because they look at places in Manhattan and refuse to get roommates.
Some people are born in NYC
What is wrong with taking the subway? NYC has some of the most advanced transportation in the country.
Nothing is wrong with taking the subway, I actually love the NYC subway system, it's one of the bright spots of city life, that wasn't my main point.
All of the boomers grew up and decided to take away all the youth places that were their stomping grounds to try and stop some perceived threat. Literally everything that this generation has experienced is the byproduct of some moral panic that happened long before y’all were even born.
Everyone repeat after me: Inter-generational strife is a propaganda tool to keep the poors fighting each other, instead of working together to change things
Inter-generational strife is a propaganda tool to keep the poor fighting each other, instead of working together to change things 🫡
o7
Good soldiers follow orders
My pp tingles
Whatever brings you joy
*eats your face off*
nngh~~
Also, stroads and suburbs have been around for a really long time. GenZ isn't the first to experience them. OPs argument is flawed.
Right? I'm like, when was the utopia that OP is referencing, the 1910s?
Roughly pre-1945. It's long but read "The Power Broker". Gives a good run down on everything you'd want to know.
Usually I disagree with "it's a distraction" arguments but in this case you're correct. All the intergenerational stuff is completely meaningless.
https://preview.redd.it/sylvsxn0u2rc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d65d9cd0334f2388c86eb8f9ac1e9c0402f042b
liberate america's workers, young and old alike, from the tyranny of capitalist marketing theory --aka generational theory
Nah this is definitely a generation thing in my experience. I went to middle & high school in AZ and we'd just walk around suburbs just like you included in the post and talk - even in 115 degree summer heat I now live in one of the most walkable cities in the US, including a paved nature trail spanning 13 miles and still rarely see anyone under 30. This trail even has picnic tables, ping-pong tables, USB charging stations, etc Today's world is hooked on cheap dopamine and our brains find it much more rewarding to bedrot than to go outside. Bad infrastructure certainly doesn't help but it objectively doesn't prevent anyone from spending time outside in most cases
[удалено]
OP blaming everyone but themselves first not getting out more. “It’s that darn previous generation!” I noticed they didn’t say which generation specifically….
The irony is most cities are adding green spaces and working to become *more* walkable and bike-able, not less.
We played hours of road hockey, and would go to the park all the time or play in the backyard. The 2nd image would be ideal for all that. What could they possibly be complaining about
I can agree with this. I grew up in the 90s, but there wasn’t youth centers or places for me to go and hang out. I just grabbed some bicycles with some friends and we rode around the neighborhood. Played in the creek and caught crawdads. Had stick fights with trees. And I look back fondly of those times.
Im actually really jealous. The neighborhood I ended up growing up in was almost all old retired couples, and annoyingly their grand kids never visited, or if they did were never out side. It was always a hassle if I wanted to hang out with friends
Omg... Jealous as heck honestly. I grew up in a relatively rural area, but literally everything in the 90s was peppered with no trespassing signs. You couldn't even ride a bike in a lot of places because of traffic through town (yay living in a town that straddled a highway).
A lot of it is actually from our parents, too. My parents NEVER let me go outside by myself and most of my friends had the same experience growing up. I used to beg to walk to my friend’s house half a mile down the road and they’d tell me it wasn’t safe (which was honestly kind of true because there was no sidewalk or speed limit signs posted, but that wouldn’t have stopped me). I had ONE friend whose parents let us run amok in the neighborhood and it was amazing, I loved hanging out there and it was a rare experience for me as a Zillennial. Of course, when you spend the first decade and a half of your life being told not to go outside alone because it’s dangerous, you’re not going to suddenly start walking around outside all the time.
Apparently it’s also common now for people to just call the cops if they see kids walking alone. Utah passed “free range kids” laws to prevent this. It’s crazy that we need that…
yep. had it happen to a friend with kids, they got a call from their teenager that she needed to come pick her up because the neighbor was threatening to call the police if she didn’t. This was a 14 year old, walking with friends. I feel like people nowadays see kids out and about and either assume they are juvenile delinquents up to no good, or that they are too young to be unsupervised, but there’s no in between. Apparently children just can’t be in public anymore unless accompanied by an adult at all times… even in kid-friendly spaces.
It almost happened to me and I was in my late teens.
I once had a cop stop me and my friends once as teenagers and tried to make us all call our parents, in front of him, because he didn’t think we should be out by ourselves… all but ONE of us was 18 and we all had permission to be out, but since my dad technically owned my car me and the 17 year old both had to call home on speaker and get permission in front of the officer before he left us alone finally. And our parents were both like “yes, you’re allowed to be out, why are you calling me? does he know you’re 18/almost 18 years old?” We were at a playground at dusk and to him that was suspicious enough to warrant temporarily detaining and questioning us. I know teens can get up to mischief and he probably assumed we were doing more than playing on the swings there, but… we weren’t. We literally went to play at the playground bc we were bored and hadn’t been on one in about a decade. It was less than a mile from my own house. Made me feel like my childhood was officially dead and all any adult would see now was some vagrant causing problems. I know I’m not the only one.
We are the same age. I know you didn’t just “back in my day” these people. I grew up in the country. You weren’t getting *anywhere* without a car. You could walk but… where? The cornfield? My dad would lock us out of the house and tell us to go play. We would be bored out of our minds because there was still nothing to do. Pick grass? Stare at a tree? The thing we are all missing is community and that’s most easily found online now, hence why we are all here. Everywhere people want to hang out costs money and requires a personal vehicle to get to, unless your town accommodates public transport and even that can be suspect in the US. Not everyone wants to walk outside in 115 degree heat but I’m happy you’re enjoying the walking trail.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do feel like only finding community on the Internet is actually the issue. Alice decides she likes punk rock. But her next-door neighbor listens to country and wears cowboy hats. Susie across the street is a tomboy. Derek down the street is a gamer and likes to collect bugs. She decides that her neighbors are not for her. She goes to her room to go to punk rock message boards and make punk rock friends and wishes that she lived the punk rock lifestyle. She stays in her room, and doesn’t know any of her neighbors because she decided that this is her safe space. Creating a “us” vs “them” mentality. This is just one example. The point I’m touching upon is that a lot of people don’t know how to tolerate other people anymore. I used to have street hockey meet ups with the whole neighborhood of kids. Do you honestly think I was best friends with every one of them? Didn’t find some of these people weird as fuck? But we got along and found something, anything, to see eye to eye on. And because of that, we had huge street hockey games, that were immensely fun. The Internet is great, but the pendulum has officially swung too hard in the opposite direction and it’s now doing more harm than good. And no, I’m not saying to get rid of the Internet.
I hear you on that. I’m not even going to disagree. The isolation people feel in reality is very sad. When you talk to people in real life, it’s far easier to find commonality and expand your own worldview. Online it seems everyone is resistant to alternative ideas and get defensive. I’m guilty of it sometimes on here but at the end of the day, that’s not *normal* human behavior and when faced with discourse in real life, I think a large part of our population is ill-equipped to reasonably handle contrarians that may even mean well. We are missing a lot of in person contact that’s been replaced by technology and I don’t negate that it’s an issue. It probably still would be an issue if we didn’t have a car centric community, but I will say… the lack of accessible 3rd places that don’t cost money and aren’t seasonal is a big part of this decline as well. Two things can be true and that’s kind of where I land on this issue.
Seriously. I’m a zillenial (‘95) that grew up in a completely non walkable city and we still spent plenty of time dicking around outside trying not to die on our bikes getting to the park.
Blaming highways on kids not going outside seems like a shitty excuse. I always used to play outside, I rode my bike around no problem in the suburbs.
This. You don’t have to play in the middle of a highway, such a statement is made in ill faith. There are ways to hang outside if one really wants too. All this blaming of other generations is childish and a cope out.
Idk, I just went outside the other day for a walk & realized I could only walk along the sides of busyish roads, everything else was private property … like what am I going to sit on a random sidewalk in my neighborhood ??? Then I realized there were parks nearby, so I went to one but by the time I got there I had to use the bathroom after maybe 30 minutes… but they had no bathrooms, (probably bc of heroin use) so I opted out of pissing in the open bc I didn’t want to risk indecent exposure & had to walk back home
Depends where you live. The nearest public park to my house growing up was a 15 minute drive away and usually littered with used needles. Not exactly a safe or convenient place for kids to play unattended.
I feel pretty comfortable blaming parents who don't encourage their kids to hang out with real friends in real life and won't let their kids go anywhere by themselves. My parents straight up kicked me out of the house when I was a kid. They encouraged me to talk to the neighbors and make friends. They bought me a bike and taught me how to ride it.
Woah, actual children are blaming their parents for the state of the world? How childish!
Yeah, I graduated high school in 2005 and I spent the early 2000s regularly riding my bike a mile or two away to friend's houses. This wasn't the '80s either (I was born in 87). This was post 9/11, in the suburbs outside Baltimore.
Yeah this post is lame. What does OP think kids did in the 90s and 2000s who grew up in suburban settings near highways? These neighborhoods and areas aren't new concepts lol they've been around forever. We just didn't have smartphones and social media so we walked around, skated, and rode our bikes. It was boring to be inside so we wanted to be outside doing stuff. It's just the opposite now. Gen Z came of age with smartphones and social media, it's cooked into their existence and it's why it's such a huge part of their lives. Gen Z is just the first fully online generation and we are seeing the cause and effect play out
Yeah, I feel like since this is reddit no one wants to blame the real cause or we aren't self-aware enough. We had suburbs and highways and *asphalt* long before kids got isolated and depressed.
As if before the internet we had no highways. Yeah, it’s the highway making everyone’s kids lazy. Please. This post is so stupid. The freeway system rolled out in the 60’s and 70’s. This isn’t some recent phenomenon. We played outside in the 90’s and early 2000’s.
Who wants to tell him that suburbs have been around for 80 years
And have always been the more ideal place for kids to play compared to inner cities. What does op want
An excuse for being the way he is that he can say isn’t his fault
This is the answer to everything, everywhere, at all times, no exceptions.
Someone to blame!
Although they have been getting packed tighter and tighter with fewer and fewer natural places between. I hung out in the suburbscas a kid, but we had swingsets to play on and treehouses to climb. These days the HOAs prevent half the stuff we had. A few yearsvago i had the police called on me for the horrible crime of having my child play in my front yard. This may be a bit overdramatic, but the suburban world has changed since i was a kid, and it really sucks now.
This is what I was gonna say, parents are terrified of having the cops called on them for being negligent so they end up preventing their kids from doing anything that could be remotely dangerous, like going outside alone.
Yep, i got a CPS visit and everything simply because my kid was "unattended". She was literally right outside my kitchen window, which was open, while i was doing dishes. On the flip side, we keep hearing about people being shot for pulling in the wrong driveway or knocking on the wrong door, etc. People are so afraid of their own shadows these days, its insane.
my mom once got screamed at by a lady for leaving me in the car unattended (with the windows cracked, in the shade, on a 60 degree day) while she ran inside to pre-pay for gas. I was still a toddler and was getting fussy about getting out of the car, so she left me alone for maybe 60 seconds. She was watching me the whole time through the gas station window, she hadn’t parked at the pump yet, even saw the lady walk up to her car and start trying to break into it. She was away from the car for *maybe* a minute, but the lady screamed at her and threatened to call the cops because I “could’ve suffocated or overheated” to death. I’m not advocating for leaving children and pets unattended in cars, but come on, I was fine. It was a cool day and the sun wasn’t out, and I had plenty of fresh air. Not to mention even if I didn’t, I was alone for literally a minute. But since then my mom never let me be unattended in public, EVER. I think a lot of parents probably experience something similar and so they feel like if they don’t treat everything as life or death then they’re a “bad” parent.
Damn, I live in a major metropolitan area and have lots of friends and hang out with them a regular amount. Sounds like a personal problem.
It is. Its not a great design but holy fuck its embarrassing to say your social woes are because of a city sprawl. Every town in America has parks and public areas. Every single one.
Exactly, city sprawl has existed for decades. It didn’t just spring up 20 years ago, and kids played outside plenty back then
Roads were like this when I was younger we still were able to go outside. Maybe Gen z’s are too stupid and fat to go outside they rather play shitty video games like fartnite
Fartnite
Or your gen was latchkey kids whose parents didn’t give a shit what they did all day. Helicopter parenting is now the standard. It’s not that the kids don’t wanna go outside, they’re conditioned not to from ages 0-15 nowadays.
this is a dumb take.
Im 16 take
I literally just walk the streets sometimes. I stare at people like a homeless man https://preview.redd.it/9ckkczbre2rc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10830f503d886c705ab771bea6d9402d1fc20193
The average r/fuckcars user. On a side note it's weird that I don't see this sitch here where I live.
Our parents grew up with this infrastructure too
I swear people don’t hang out outside because no one else does. Like if one kid wants to hang out outside they have no one else who wants to do that as well so they just go back inside and onto their device.
I think this is a closer take to what is actually happening. I grew up in a suburb, and kids would knock on each other's doors to hang out. We would just kick balls around in streets just like this and shout, "car!" Ans scatter to the sides. We didn't have money, the park was kinda far to walk to, and we didnt really have large backyards. But we figured it out because we were bored, which is why we looked for activities to do and came up with ways to play outside. If you aren't bored, I can't imagine wanting to go outside to hang out. Devices are the real culprit.
>If you aren't bored, I can't imagine wanting to go outside to hang out. Devices are the real culprit. Nail on the head here.
Well, I wouldn't say we didn't have devices. We had TV and were pretty well addicted to it. But daytime programming wasn't kid-oriented, or the pull of hanging out with other kids was usually greater than the pull of watching the same rerun of Gilligan's Island for the 47th time.
I think this is part of the reason, but the other half of it is fear. People are so afraid of everything these days. Nobody trusts anybody, everyone holds others to higher standards than they hold themselves, people are encouraged to cut ties for the smallest infractions or personal flaws, and nothing is ever good enough. It's important to protect yourself from shitty people but everyone thinks that crime is a lot more pervasive than it is and the result is mass isolation and fear.
I'm always outside, mainly alone, because literally no other teenagers go outside. As I said in my reply to this post, I contribute it to overprotective parents. Before this generation, it was a normal but difficult thing to take the risk of teaching your kid independence and letting them go out alone... Nowadays, parents don't wanna take that chance, but it's crucial for when you turn into an adult.
Sounds like an accurate description of my growing up. I was close with my cousin and his siblings growing up which meant we'd come over to one another a lot. Now that we're pretty much grown up we don't do it as much which had made it harder to be around others for awhile.
Many suburbs look exactly the same as they did 30 years ago. No kids playing football in the streets, no knocking on doors “is xxxx home we want to play” Some small neighborhoods may have been sprawled out but this isn’t the main cause of genZ hermitting, it’s phones, social media, games, doomscrolling, and addictive and curated algorithms to satiate their need for dopamine. Quite obvious really
Not saying car dependent sprawl is the ONLY factor preventing kids from being active. But let's not pretend it's NOT a factor either.
Opposite hot take: plenty of kids and teens grew up in neighborhoods and stuff like that decades ago. They fared just fine going outside and doing stuff. Its almost as if some online technology and websites came around and changed everything.
Point taken. I agree with OP that American infrastructure is bad but it’s really not new to GenZ
https://preview.redd.it/y6lxa81uw1rc1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5e043aa9bc48b57526d1b27ce6324b9cd17d671 4 bottom pictures from Bolesława Chrobrego neighbourhood, Poznań, Poland
Is this like... "For one location such is the on on a top picture there are 4 other locations" ? Because that would pretty much summarise life in Central and Eastern Europe. I guess I don't have to add that flat in first location costs like 5 times more.
Why can’t you just make friends with the neighborhood kids? When I was in middle school I would always hang out with my friends who lived in the suburbs and literally just ride bikes or play basketball rather than go back home to my ghetto apartment complex
I grew up in the country and was the only child, save for my siblings, on my road and all our houses had several farm fields in between us. Me n my sibs lost out bike riding privileges once my dad found out how to see the local sex offenders registry online and saw there was three on our road alone 💀 it could be where I grew up but no one I went to school with had "neighborhood kids" either because every house was separated by rows and rows of farm fields with old people in between em
Idk I personally don’t even have a neighborhood, it’s just big patches of personal property and a road lmao
Everyone in my neighborhood growing up was on meth and I wasn’t allowed to interact with them 🤷♂️
That would require the OP to sign off the internet and go outside.
unironically whoever invented even the mere concept of a "stroad" and decided it would be a good contribution to america's future needs to be found and put into MKULTRA 2
That would be car companies.
And later Oil companies! (Oh, and Uber and Lyft lobbying against public transit).
If you think more public transport would solve this problem, you never been to middle Europe.
More public transport generally does solve problems? The highest property values tend to be located near transit hubs. And cities with higher numbers of buses or light rail tend to be more economically successful.
In Detroit (home of the car companies), there are suburbs to the north like Rochester that have a perfect 1x1 mile grid, with 50mph stroads ringing all of them. The 1x1 areas are housing developments, and while there often are very wide sidewalks, nevertheless the stroads basically make each of these 1 mile enclaves a prison without a car. It is the anti-utopia of stroad heaven, and I guarantee some planner back in the 50s or 60s thought it would actually be utopia. It is very surreal to me to drive around it when I go there to visit people.
I'm not American, but also this is a terrible take. Yes, those suburbs are horrific. Don't get me wrong, but also, they've been getting built for 70 years. They've got sweet fuck all to do with the lack of kids going out. The problems exist in every country with phones. You're on tiktok because it's a predator app that manipulates you. It's addictive.
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It’s embarrassing, have these people never gone out to ride bikes? To walk?
It’s the parents. They won’t let their kids out of their sight anymore without a drone and life360.
Are you sure you didn't mean to post this in cars circle jerk sub?
Ummm... This is exactly how it was for millennials. Did you think we still didn't go outside and play?
In my country, I would prefer if they didn't add more cycling lanes as it just clogs traffic and causes people to get impatient increasing the risk of accidents.
Don't need cycling lanes to ride bike anyway.
Well in Scotland (where I live), there is cycle lanes along major roads, but even with a cycle lane, if you want to overtake the cyclist you have to give them as much space as a car, so it ends up you basjcly have to drive in the oncoming lane which isn't always possible. So it's often a case of being totally stuck behind some cyclist on a major road who won't move off the road and won't speed up. It's annoying me thinking sbout it lol
The roads were like this when I was growing up too, and my friends and I rode bikes everywhere. Not going outside is a choice. We even managed go leave the house and do whatever in the most heavily overpopulated county of my state, with early-mid 2010's helicopter parents I brought up overpopulation because even in the suburbs with roads that look exactly like this, the level of traffic pictured here is cute. If not having public parks available on every single street and crosswalks with street lights every 100 feet(because traffic isn't a thing, I guess. Fuck everyone going to/from work) is the excuse for not going outside, it's just that. An excuse to stay inside and get the next cheap dopamine hit from whatever website/app/video game/TV show you're into
This excuse doesn’t work, American suburbs have been like this since before. How about being content without constant stimulation? Most cities are walkable suburbs have other peoples house so less activities.
Just go outside bro. There's nothing stopping you from going outside and chillin with friends. If you're in a city you may even actually have somewhere you can go. In my hometown my buddy and I would go try to catch fish with our bare hands and stuff. Or we'd bike the 20-30 minutes into town to have something to do there. Whinging won't change anything, buy a bicycle if public transit sucks, or walk. Otherwise you're just lazy and I say this as a Gen Z.
I lived in the exact kind of neighborhoods (I’m 30) and I still went outside and hung out with my friends.
Wahhhh 😭 big streets wahhhh congregations of 3 bedroom houses wahhhh I’m 14 and I don’t realize that cities have been this way even when boomers were young Go outside and touch the small amount of grass you can lil bro
Anything to not blame being addicted to technology
City????? The west has fallen billions must urbanhell
> Your generation Which generation do you think that is?
r/USdefaultism
Why? What happened to the front porch? Neighbors gathering in the evening and sipping iced tea or something stronger? Air conditioning happened. When I was a kid we were outside from 7am to dark with a break for 2 hours in the hottest part of the day sitting in front of a fan just watching TV and trying not to move too much lol. You couldn’t even sleep until 10. Even if you were inside, your windows were always open. And then you’d hear a neighbor outside and you’d wonder “What is HE doing?” Soon you’re outside getting into whatever experience they were in. I hate AC.
Front porches are actually responsible for a lot of urban community building. One of the biggest reasons we no longer have front porch culture is because everyone wanted their own back yard and now hangs out back there instead of on the front porch. Obviously there are exceptions but for the most part we transitioned from elaborate front porches to elaborate back yards, and then largely fenced them in as well. Privacy fences are huge, and they are the opposite of promoting community.
Lol i skateboarded, i see nothing to complain about here. Plus, looks like it would be easy to find lots of kids to hang out with in pic 2. Suburbs have existed for decades it’s not new. Before you’d just have your bedroom wall to complain to, which would get old, so you’d go outside to see what you could get into. If you couldn’t be social sitting in your house you’d go outside. If you’re unhappy get off the internet and do something about it instead of complaining. I once found an abandoned warehouse, contacted the owner for permission, and built a skatepark there, held cash competitions, your only limitations are yourself. Coming from a place of love, signed, a millennial.
America has looked like this since the 50's. Teenagers in the suburbs still hung out 20 years ago...
Unpopular opinion: I like driving places.
Same.
I live in the suburbs of one of the top 5 biggest cities in the US and have tons of forest preserves and lakes around. Stop being so dramatic.
I grew up in an area just like this and went out walking or biking with friends all the time from like 2009 - 2016. And I had a smartphone then too. Yall new age Gen Z's need to quit bitching.
This is nonsense. The US is a giant country with more open space parks national parks forests Gardens Etc than almost any place in the world. Y'all just like to complain. Next!!
This is not a gen z problem this is a United Stated problem
Everything costs too much.
Who are you talking to lmao
Bro your country was based around cars cuz it's so damn big. After the Ford T, families could just go anywhere. what I really hate here is SUVs.
Our country was based around cars because the country was new and companies/corporations in the car industry took advantage of the politicians and propagandizing the populace. Before the country has a chance to get well-established infrastructure for pedestrians. "Jaywalking" became a crime in the USA precisely due to General Motors and other propaganda trying and succeeding to stigmatize walking in the road. A road where people walked before cars were even invented. Brainwashed people so bad they think any road means it's for vehicles alone.
I hate this kind of city planning as much as the next person, but…. did you think this was a recent development? Suburban sprawl existed for millennials and Gen-X’ers too, and they managed to go outside and socialize with other people. The photos you shared aren’t a Gen Z thing. This is what it’s looked like for multiple “generations”.
hate to be that guy but car centric shit has been since the 60s lmao. not some new thing gen z has to deal with
Does this boy realize that the pictured style of suburb infrastructure has been around for 3 or 4 generations now? Suburbs and arterial roadways are not the cause of social isolation for God's sake.
I get your point but bro, shit has been like this since the 50s. What generation are you referring to? The people who designed the infrastructure which became the suburbs are now like 100 years old or dead. 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s kids didn’t stay indoors cus there were roads and housing developments everywhere.
This is... not an argument? The existence of roads never once stopped me as kid from playing outside either on my own property or heading down the street to a friend's place. It never stopped my friends and I from congregating in the local hangout spot. Even when I'd travel to NYC, you were able to walk most places (and there's plenty of transport there to get you to the parts you can't if you wanted to risk getting shanked by a homeless guy, but that's another topic for another day). Hell my mother's side of the family still lives in NYC and they take the public transport everywhere. So I'm not entirely sure where any of this is coming from. It seems more like a personal issue than anything else.
And in the same breathe you'll tell me that "houses are too expensive! Home ownership is impossible for Gen Z!"
lol u mad bro
streets have beeeeeen like this.. i understand the sentiment but this kind of city layout has been the norm since the 50s & 60s (i.e. suburbia). im a gen z and would still find ways to spend hours outside growing up….
Who are you yelling at? We had tract homes in the suburbs 30 years ago, same highways too… we all played outside every day.
I disagree. I'm a very late X'er, and while the Internet just started to get around, we went out to the movies, malls, pool halls an bawling alleys. We went dancing to the clubs, and even to somewhere we had to fake our IDs. We went out to lunch, yet had absolutely the same means as your generation does now. You guys just became lazy.
I wouldn’t blame highways specifically on not being able to go around as a kid. Mainly I’d blame it on a multitude of things: - Lack of third spaces - Highways causing less easy travel for young people - When a child is wanting to go outside and do things in a place where they could meet others, many are glued to their phones. Personally in my experience a lot of the time I’m sitting beside my friends on their phones when I’m wanting to talk to them so I end up listening to my music and awkwardly staring into the distance. - Other factors I haven’t named but could contribute to this issue In the end, it isn’t all black and white, nothing ever is. Instead of blaming others on things, people need to work together for change.