mhoyeI don’t spend a lot of time on here telling you all how smart my kids are but today I was talking with my son about the idea of a “Third Place” and he mentioned how all these “coming of age” stories he’s read have kids "hanging out at the mall”, and what a weird, totally alien idea that is to him and his friends. “Did they even have places you could sit down or not buy anything then? None of us have money.”
“I wish I lived in a world where I had a third space that wasn’t my room” and God Damn I felt that.
If we don’t want kids staring at screens all day then maybe we should build a world where online multiplayer chat isn’t the only third space that teenagers have available to them.
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@mhoye Such places do get designed occasionally.
The design for a new children's playground was being discussed. "But," someone complained, "that feature there provides a shelter from the weather: during the evening it'll be inhabited by gangs of teenagers hanging around and misbehaving [under-age drinking etc]."
To which the answer was "yes, that's right, that's by design."
The idea was that as teenagers are going to hang around and misbehave somewhere or other anyway, it's better if it's somewhere predictable, so that for example the police can keep an occasional eye on them to make sure they're safe.
Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary"police"
"make sure they're safe"
I think you accidentally put things together that don't belong in the same sentence...
Kerfuffle@pteryx @TimWardCam @mhoye
They do belong in the same sentence. If that doesn't apply to where you are, then where you are has shit police.
They do belong in the same sentence. If that doesn't apply to where you are, then where you are has shit police.
@kerfuffle @pteryx @TimWardCam Sure but that’s a very, very common problem that isn’t the teenagers’ to solve.
@mhoye @pteryx @TimWardCam You didn't say "teenagers should build a world", you said "we should build a world". If a suggestion for playground design gets shot down because police are a threat to safety, which I can tell you is a crazy concept in the part of the world where I'm from, then it sounds like "we" have a lot of building to do to remedy that first.
@mhoye @kerfuffle @pteryx It's their parents'. Most of whom are happy with their local police, as witness the fact that they can't be arsed to vote in local elections.
The Lack Thereof 
@kerfuffle @pteryx @TimWardCam @mhoye
At least in the US, if there are police watching my kids to "keep them out of trouble", then the police are actually going to try and saddle them with a criminal record for some trivial bullshit.
Copd don't advance in their careers by keeping people safe, whatever definition you give it. They advance in their careers by having a big arrest count. That is the metric that matters to them. And it's easy to arrest kids.
@lackthereof @kerfuffle @pteryx @mhoye Not round here (though quite possibly in other parts of the UK - it's not a uniform service).
Example.
I was spending a shift with a pair of Specials. (Special Constables are part-time volunteer police who are likely to have normal full time day jobs as well. One of this pair was a secretary as her day job, but when Friday night came around she left her husband to look after the children and put on the uniform.)
After doing some more boring stuff, "right, we'll go and check on the kids at the such-and-such rec" they said, so we coasted into the car park, engine and lights off. Got out of the car. Teenagers scattered into the darkness of the recreation ground.
All except one, who was about thirteen years old and too drunk to run away - indeed to start with she was too drunk to stand up, so he mates had left her lying in a heap in the car park. So the Special walked out a little way into the darkness and called out "hey, there's one of your mates here, she can't manage on her own, she needs looking after." Eventually one of the other teenagers sidled into view. "This one a friend of yours?" Yes. "Where does she live?" Over there. "Is there anyone at home?" Yes, her mother. "Well, I think you'd better take her home to her mother, don't you? - you can't leave her out here in that state."
And the Special gave this slightly older teenager her card - "this is my personal mobile number, call me in the morning to tell me your mate's OK." And one of the other kids appeared out of the darkness to help take the drunk girl home.
That's how you're supposed to do policing, isn't it?
@TimWardCam
That sounds fantastic, and is absolutely not how that same situation would have turned out in the US. It is hard to conceive of such a rational first responder deployment.
At 18 I was detained by police in a public park for "trespassing" (being in the park past dusk).
@lackthereof My lad and some of his mates were camping in a not-public piece of land belonging to one of the #Cambridge colleges. (No, we didn't know where he was or what he was doing, but he'd have answered his phone if we'd called him - that was the unspoken deal.)
Eventually the police came by. Bunch of teenage boys in a tent on private land without permission, almost certainly with under-age drink, and who knows what they might have been smoking.
"All right lads, you've had your fun, time to go home now." And that was that.
(Of course one reason why the police know where to find teenagers misbehaving is because that's where they themselves were misbehaving when they were teenagers.)