@ptoothfish If kids now had the childhoods of gen X and elder millennials, the people calling to a return to innocent years that never existed would be calling them thugs running amok, and for long prison terms for shoplifting and vandalism.

The loudest people shouting for this lived blessed suburban or countryside childhoods, with lots of green spaces and horse riding lessons, they never experienced the city childhood, where schoolyards were tarmac and playgrounds and football fields were sold off and built on, while kids were left with brown field sites, bombed out buildings to play in that were never rebuilt, rotting spaces that used to be factories or train tracks, or used to be home to prefabs that still had the concete based amid the scrub. Places where the ground crunched with hidden glass that we were told not to play, but went because there was nothing else, the parks were sold so the only other option was to play on the roads where we'd suck in leaded exhaust fumes from passing cars and be subjected to unearned hostility, shouts of abuse for being too loud from boomers without kids. And then there are the absentee parents, working long hours, needing us to have house keys as kids were released at half three and parents at five, or later, leaving them fending for themselves...