I used to take the train to another town and then a bus, just to get to school every day, as a kid (i.e. 10-12). This was before cellphones, and I doubt I even had money for a payphone on me. I was fine and it was perfectly normal. Of course this was in France, not the U.S. so quite different in terms of cultural acceptance. It was before the concept of sex offenders (and a host of other dangers) really exploded in the media, which I believe was the big shift in everyone's minds (this idea of a pervert or kidnapper lurking behind every corner).

> I think even a lot of people old enough to have kids these days don't realise how many of us spent hours not just roaming around freely, but roaming around freely with no way for our parents to contact us or know where we were.

How so? they would have grown up that way themselves? -- I don't think it was common for children to have cell phones until after 2000, no? Median age for first time mothers in the US is 30.

Note that I said "a lot", not a majority.

Combination of the freedom to run around like those of us who grew up a decade or two earlier being given to them later with that freedom more likely to coincide with getting a phone or at least being near in time.

E.g. someone getting a phone at 10 in 2003 would be 30 this year already had a substantial likelihood of having had less freedom to run around at 10 in 2003 than I had at 8 in 1983, or indeed at 6-7. (I'm by no means suggesting every 10 year old in 2003 were getting phones).

It's very possible that the number is smaller than I'm imagining. It was merely a casual observation that we're now also increasingly starting to come across parents who grew up either being watched or being reachable, so the notion of kids being able to not just roam freely but roam freely without at least being able to call to say where they were is getting stranger to more and more people.

Cellphones were used to make it extraordinarily convenient for busybodies to snitch at all moments. Any increased freedom of the child to roam by virtue of having emergency communication was nixed by the ability for any passer by to immediately call police for unsupervised children without even the inconvenience of driving to a pay phone.

All the places I played alone as a kid: the playground, the rural creek, the open fields. It was inconvenient for adults to snitch me out from there. Not so anymore.

Fair enough. I wonder when the change happened, as someone born in 1979 in Ft. Lauderdale I had the same freedom (even requirement!) to go out on my own as a child that many posters have mentioned here.