Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

More importantly, is there room for childhood at all in a world where the worthiness of any person's activities is evaluated on their potential to meet a plausible future need, however unlikely?

I understand your concern, but I think we can make judgements that still allow huge scope for freedom: that making a TikTok with friends is better than an hour of following recommended links on YouTube by yourself, for example

I can imagine plenty of cases where the latter is "worse" on my terms than the former, the former "worse" than the latter, and neither/both worth the time. Rather than go neurotic over it, I do what I want to do within semi-reasonable bounds for health, safety & sustainability.

Yes, you're right. The problem parents face is how to keep their kids within those bounds. To maintain that it will just happen comes with a burden of proof, I think. But it sounds like we're in rough agreement on that

Parents regularly fail to keep their children within those bounds while excluding nearly all of their options for pursuing enjoyment. Case in point: the sheer number who literally give their prepubescent children amphetamines because a school administrator said they ought to.

The reality is that *most* of the constraints children operate under have little or nothing to do with their health and safety. They reflect parents working very hard to fulfill social expectations and guide their children down a path that made sense approx one generation ago.

Hewing to the past is a fair criticism. But pity us: it's always hard to see what parts of the present will make the best future. As with any evolutionary family tree, there are many dead ends