Bring back unsupervised third spaces that you don’t tell your parents about.
That’s where you build character.
And find porn.
And burn things. And explode things.
And do sick jumps on your bike
And smoke a little weed then stress reeeeaaaal hard for a few hours
When I through that lighter at the wall of the empty foundation of a house that was never built in the woods behind my house and it exploded, I finally felt like myself for the first time
Also hurt yourself and others
Yes that is an important lesson.
This, but unironically
This is a boomer-ass take, but knowing how to deal with a situation where you or someone else gets hurt is a really important skill and reading about it can only get you so far
It's not so much the getting hurt itself that needs to happen, but being put in situations where you could get hurt so that you learn to evaluate risk.
Getting hurt a little bit is very useful.
I've forgotten about plenty of situations where things could've gone wrong but didn't but I can still vividly remember accidentally hitting myself in the dick with my bike handle.
(Since I know someone will want to know: I misjudged my speed and the impact a wet wheel had on my braking power. When I noticed I was going too fast to take a corner I braked and the front brake locked the wheel immediately. Inertia did the rest.)
That and a (thankfully merely scary) run-in with aquaplaning a few years later taught me to be wary of wet driving conditions, especially of braking in them.
I wasn’t being ironic. I think knowing how to assess a situation for danger and deal with the consequences of your decisions is very important.
Bones heal, chicks dig scars, and glory is forever.
The very concept of unsupervised kids is so anathema to society today. Kids need spaces to just be kids.
Summer camp - the overnight, week or two long kind, is a great middle ground. Yes, kids are "supervised". But... Mostly, just by bigger kids. Who are there, mostly to have fun too. Run, play, swim, learn about themselves and other people. My boys both spent every summer for 12+ years at camp. And they always grew, so, so much while they were there.
I went to a Nerf tournament and humans vs. zombies game at a college campus a while back. The Nerf hobby has some interesting intersections. On the one hand, there are some legitimately competitive teams who drill and practice and have standardized uniforms and blasters and everything, so there's some organized sports types in there. On the other hand, it overlaps with the gun hobby, seeing as it's playing at being a gun fight, and it uses a lot of the same accessories. On the other other hand, it seems to be a very queer-friendly hobby; definitely a lot of flags being represented that weekend.
All of these disparate groups had a great time with each other. Huge range of demographics, all having good wholesome fun, making new friends, using their bodies and their minds, expressing themselves while also respecting the rules and structures of the game and the college campus. It was beautiful.
At the end of the weekend, the college Nerf club, which had been running these events on campus for years, came out and tearfully announced that this would be the last such event, because the college administration had announced there would be no further blaster events permitted on campus. Nobody got hurt that weekend, but presumably the administration was afraid of getting sued if someone did.
And just like that, a beautiful mechanism for bringing together lots of strangers and making them into friends and comrades disappeared in a whiff of imaginary liability for a theoretical accident that hadn't actually happened.
And we wonder why young people are addicted to social media and video games.
I would also really like to see a governmental permit office that distributes permit numbers on demand which can be used for age verification without revealing ANY information about the person verifying to ANY private entities.
I want to see this in a bunch of countries.
But where will I park my car and how will those places make money, that's America today
One time when I was biking home from middle school the office got suspicious that I was biking instead of riding home in a car, and they had to keep me in the office and call my parents
What the actual fuck?
Like malls, parks, the skate park?
arcades, bowling alleys and skating rinks.
coffee shops, record stores, hobby shops.
These places kind of still exist, just they all require that you spend money. The landlords have gotten out of control so no one can afford to not constantly be charging money for these kinds of spaces, so they just keep going out of business
Rec centers, pools, and under 18 clubs.
Which means what?
A first space refers to the place you live.
A second space is where you spend most of your time that is not at home, like work or school.
A third space is everything else. Shops, restaurants, parks, etc.
The issue that young people are facing is that there isn't really anywhere they can exist that isnt at home or school. Communal spaces where young people are allowed to spend time, especially places where there isnt an expectation to spend money constantly have been eroding away over the past 30 years.
It's not a coincidence why most pre-2000 teenager-focused media has the mall as a main setting
The not spending money part is soo key. We should not have to spend money every time we leave our homes.
Thanks for the explanation. Is a second space a space you're obligated to be, like work/school, or just anywhere you spend most of your time regardless?
in sociology it's home = first place, and workplace = second place, but Ray Oldenburg calls second place anywhere you spend most of the time when you're awake
Parks, libraries, community centers, free museums, beaches, etc.
A lot of those places ban unaccompanied minors.
Exactly the problem.
This is a pet peeve of mine. Well, more than a peeve.
When I grew up I spent significant time in youth centers, made social connections, formed my music taste and my first band. All away from my parents.
These do not exist anymore around where I live. So where do kids hang out these days? In the mall. It's so fucked up, people glance at them as if they were shop mannequins. And they take the pose, with the chewing gum and the phone. That's no way to spend your free time.
PS: an interesting variation was a Sleeping Space - some folks had formed an association and rented some space for people to hang out, literally: lots of cushions and mattresses, very quiet. It was amazing even though not many people actually slept there.
PPS: free entry and not being asked to leave is what they all had in common.
Me and my mates just hung out in the basement of the one with the least responsible parents.
Did all sorts of nasty shit like D&D, board games and binging movies.
I work at a museum and our director has started using the term third space to justify a finacialization of our non-profit. Be mindful of how the term is being used by capitalists to extract more resources.
It won't matter when technology is designed to steal your attention at all times. Corporations help cause this situation by selling products that addict everyone and they're getting damned good at it. How long did it take for social media and entertainment through phones to occupy everyone's day? People spend hours a day not their phones, time that was available for socializing even 15 years ago. You can bring 3rd places back it it's all competing with other attentions grabbers made by billion dollar industries.
I don't want to fix anyone's social media addiction. I want to bitch about kids on social media and feel like a genius
Just, giving them a future to believe in might help too.
What third space did we used to have as kids that we no longer have?
Malls, Chuck-E-Cheese, walkable neighborhoods and main streets, a lot of diners and such have been shut down in the past half century. Cities have kind of restructured around increased industry and productivity.
Parks are making a comeback, though, I hear.
EDIT: OH, and LIBRARIES. For clear reasons conservatives the world over are trying tk dismantle public libraries.
You forgot construction sites, drainage gullies, and random patches of forest.
Oh, and the middle of corn fields. That’s where Amish kids would go to party in my day. They had the best weed.
Outside
In my suburban high school social world, before cell phones:
A lot of these still exist in some degree, but the loss of malls and movie theaters has really put a damper on things, and the rise of cell phones has deemphasized the need for in person interactions with peers (rather than following an influencer on social media).
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