In the 80s and 90s, there was a massive child abduction scare. Parents were encouraged to keep a more personal eye on their kids, when before it had been considered fine to let them roam and play unsupervised; at the same time, teens wandering without an adult were increasingly seen by older adults as pests – potential troublemakers and thieves ready to harass innocent passersby and local shops. Which, honestly, has historical precedent, but the Boomers didn’t like Gen X doing unto them as they had done unto others in their day. Malls didn’t really have security so much until the 2000s, when they started harassing and then later banning unaccompanied teens from the premises; it used to just be The Thing for parents to drop their kids off at the mall to spend weekend afternoons at the arcade and cinema with their friends.
Can’t do that anymore.
90s kids had so, so much more freedom than kids now, and it’s not a good change, at all.
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