People give a variety of different reasons for this, but everyone agrees that it isn't healthy and it's really dystopian and freaky. I mean kids are missing out on their playtime, of actually exploring the world, understanding how it works, seeing the sights of nature, coming together with groups of other children and learning social dynamics. They're missing out on some of the best moments of their childhoods and it has a bunch of negative effects later down the line. Things which you might recognise in your own experiences.

その理由は人によってさまざまだが、健康的でないこと、そしてディストピア的で異常であることは誰もが認めるところだ。つまり、子供たちは遊びの時間を失っているのだ。実際に世界を探検し、その仕組みを理解し、自然の景色を眺め、他の子供たちのグループと一緒になって社会的力学を学ぶ。子供たちの子供時代における最高の瞬間のいくつかを失っているのだ。あなた自身の経験にも当てはまるかもしれない。

Which is why society is drifting into a deep loneliness epidemic. People, especially in

だからこそ、社会は深い孤独の蔓延に陥っているのだ。人々は、特に

Generation Z and Generation Alpha, are becoming more and more alienated from their communities, nobody knows their neighbours, nobody feels a part of a society. But it wasn't always this way.

ジェネレーションZとジェネレーション・アルファは、コミュニティからますます疎外されつつある。しかし、昔からこうだったわけではない。

And so to understand why this is happening and why kids don't play outside anymore, we need to understand a different period, 50 years ago back in time, and see what went so horribly wrong and how we can fix this.

なぜこのようなことが起きているのか、なぜ子供たちが外で遊ばなくなったのかを理解するためには、50年前という異なる時代を理解し、何がひどく間違っていたのか、どうすれば解決できるのかを考える必要がある。

Going back 50 years, for the kids growing up in the 70s or the 80s, life was a completely different story. It was the opposite from today. Kids weren't cooped up inside playing Fortnite and watching gamers, instead they were actively pushed out of the house and their parents would only call them back for dinner hours later. Most of the time, kids didn't have any guidance or supervision, they had to make their own fun, build their own relationships with other kids and create their own memories. The process of being bored then creating an answer for your own boredom is key, but today it's been numbed so much that it's incredibly rare. All of the skills that kids learned during these formative years gave them what they needed to succeed later on. Plus, it gave lots of kids a much needed break from their home life. Kids with rough childhoods could find a few precious hours of freedom. They could come together with their friends, learn how to navigate social dynamics, and in turn, learn how to be functioning adults. But the first nail in the coffin came when the boomers took charge and started raising the next generation. The 1980s

遡ること50年、70年代や80年代に育った子供たちにとって、人生はまったく違うものだった。今とは正反対だった。子供たちは家の中に閉じこもってフォートナイトをやったり、ゲーマーを見たりするのではなく、積極的に家から追い出され、親は数時間後に夕食のために呼び戻すだけだった。ほとんどの場合、子供たちは指導や監督を受けず、自分たちで楽しみを作り、他の子供たちとの関係を築き、自分たちで思い出を作らなければならなかった。退屈を感じたら、その退屈に対する答えを自分で作り出すというプロセスが重要なのだが、現代ではそれが麻

This was the decade of Stranger Danger. It was the first time that serial killers were now widely known across America. People were terrified of these names like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.

ストレンジャー・デンジャーの10年だった。連続殺人犯がアメリカ全土で広く知られるようになった最初の時代である。テッド・バンディやジョン・ウェイン・ゲイシーといった名前に人々は恐怖した。

Bundy was being sought for questioning and the deaths of at least 38 women from Seattle, Washington to Tallahassee, Florida and was just last week placed on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. And with the Stranger Danger campaign, it told kids across the US and the rest of the West to be intimately afraid of being whisked away in a white van from a man offering candy. You've taught your children to be polite and friendly, but have you taught them when not to be? Hi there! Do you live around here? Uh-huh. You going to school? Yes. Well, I could give you a ride. Last year, 50,000 children disappeared, many of them from nice safe neighbourhoods.

バンディは、ワシントン州シアトルからフロリダ州タラハシーまで、少なくとも38人の女性を殺害した容疑で捜索されており、先週FBIの最重要指名手配リスト10人に入ったばかりだった。そして「ストレンジャー・デンジャー」キャンペーンで、アメリカ全土と西側諸国の子供たちに、キャンディを勧める男から白いバンで連れ去られることを心底恐れるようにと伝えた。あなたは子供たちに礼儀正しく、友好的に接するよう教えてきた。こんにちは！この辺に住んでるの？ええ。学校は？ええ。送ろうか？昨年、5万人の子供たちが姿を消した。その多くは

It's a ridiculous idea once you actually look at the statistics. One study actually looked at nearly 800,000 cases of missing children and found that only 1 in 10,000 were cases of stereotypical kidnapping. 99.9% of the time, the kids were with another family member, had run away by themselves or there was some other explanation. Of course, this didn't stop the 80s news media taking the story of a kidnapping epidemic and running with it.

実際に統計を見てみると、ばかげた考えだ。ある研究では、実際に80万件近くの行方不明児童のケースを調べたところ、ステレオタイプな誘拐のケースは1万件に1件しかなかった。99.9％の場合、子供たちは他の家族と一緒にいたか、一人で逃げ出したか、あるいは他の理由があったのだ。もちろん、それでも80年代のニュース・メディアは、誘拐が流行しているというストーリーを取り上げて、それを鵜呑みにした。

Often they take one isolated story and blow it up into a nationwide frenzy. In 1982,

彼らはしばしば、ひとつの孤立した話を取り上げて、それを全国的な熱狂に発展させる。1982年のことだ、

CBS told their audience of parents that 50,000 kids were being kidnapped by strangers every single year, which is an outrageous claim that was disproven multiple times, but the message was already out. The stranger danger hysteria was everywhere and it wasn't too long before it reached the highest levels of government. President Reagan put together a special task force specifically dedicated to warning people about the malevolent forces outside of the house.

CBSは、毎年5万人の子供たちが見知らぬ人に誘拐されていると視聴者に伝えた。見知らぬ人の危険に対するヒステリーはいたるところで起こり、それが政府の最高レベルまで達するのにそう時間はかからなかった。レーガン大統領は、家の外の悪意ある力について人々に警告することを専門とする特別対策本部を設置した。

Talk to your children about not talking to strangers and do it today. A message for your child's safety from the American Medical Association, warning parents to keep a close eye on their children. Ironically, the whole craze had probably a lot of negative effects on the health and well-being of thousands of children, if not hundreds of thousands. Either it locked them inside with the people who were actually hurting them or they got lost or put in a bad situation and were too afraid to ask random people for help. One 11-year-old boy scout who got lost was too afraid of the people searching for him because they were strangers and so he actively hid from them. Even today though, you can trace the need to keep children under lock and key to these measures. It's gotten so bad that multiple people have been arrested for simply letting their kids walk alone to school or play alone outside. In 2022, one mum was arrested for child endangerment for letting her kids play alone at the park. It didn't matter that she had left them in the care of a family friend, she was added to the Central Registry, which in Arizona means that she could be barred from working with children for the next 25 years. Stories like this highlighted how crazy the US and the rest of the West have gotten about safeguarding children to the point that they've completely lost their independence. Breeding this fear of strangers and therefore of the outside world changed a whole generation's perspective. That fear of the unknown directly interferes with that crucial process of discovery and exploration that kids need to experience early on in their lives. Without it, they could be left scarred and afraid for the rest of their life. It's no wonder anxiety levels have skyrocketed. At the end of the day though, this still doesn't really explain the massive changes we've seen in how kids play. Tons of kids won't have ever listened to the stranger danger nonsense. Instead, physical changes that you can see with your own eyes are the ones that made the real difference. The way previous generations have made the world hostile to children is the number one reason they don't play outside anymore, and it was during the 1990s that these changes really came into effect.

見知らぬ人に話しかけないことを、今日から子どもに話して実行しましょう。アメリカ医師会からの子どもの安全のためのメッセージ。親は子どもから目を離さないよう警告している。皮肉なことに、この大流行は、何十万人とは言わないまでも、何千人もの子どもたちの健康と幸福に、おそらく多くの悪影響を及ぼした。実際に自分を傷つけている人たちと家の中に閉じこもってしまったか、迷子になったり、悪い状況に置かれたりして、怖くて不特定多数の人に助けを求めることができなくなってしまったのだ。迷子になったある11歳のボーイスカウトは、自分

But before we continue, I want to tell you about Odoo, that provides entrepreneurs with a range of applications to simplify the day-to-day management of their businesses. From invoicing, accounting, project management, and one of my personal favourites, website creation. Let's say you want to create a blog about kids not going outside like this video, or in my case, creating a website to promote my own email newsletter, where I can go into societal topics like this and more. If I want to create a website to promote my email newsletter, all I have to do is use their website building software, as the first app is free for life.

Odooは、日々のビジネス管理を簡素化する様々なアプリケーションを起業家に提供している。請求書発行、会計、プロジェクト管理、そして個人的に気に入っているのがウェブサイト作成だ。例えば、このビデオのように、子供が外に出ないことについてのブログを作りたいとしよう。私の場合は、自分のメールマガジンを宣伝するためのウェブサイトを作りたい。自分のメールマガジンを宣伝するためのウェブサイトを作りたい場合、最初のアプリは生涯無料なので、ウェブサイト作成ソフトを使うだけでいい。

And on top of that, they offer a 1 year free custom domain name, that has unlimited hosting and support, without you ever having to put in your bank details for a nasty surprise.

その上、1年間無料のカスタムドメイン名、無制限のホスティングとサポートを提供している。

And so once you're on the website configurator, it's super simple. You can choose the colour palette or insert your own logo, select the pages and features you're interested in using, and then just choose the theme. And just like that, you have a website. And in building up the website, it's super simple and intuitive, no technical skills required. You simply drag and drop blocks, add content in from the side, and functionalities like animations on top of the blocks, or to change the image shapes. And you can use their grid feature that lets you layout and organise these blocks so simply. And if you're ever short of inspiration for content on the site, you can use their AI feature to generate or reformulate text on the site. The Odoo website builder application is a really powerful tool for creating a website quickly, easily and efficiently, all free of charge. So check it out today using the link in the description below.

ウェブサイト・コンフィギュレーターにアクセスしたら、あとは超シンプル。カラーパレットを選んだり、ロゴを挿入したり、使いたいページや機能を選択したり、あとはテーマを選ぶだけ。そうすれば、ウェブサイトが完成します。ウェブサイトの構築は、超シンプルかつ直感的で、技術的なスキルは必要ありません。ブロックをドラッグ・アンド・ドロップするだけで、サイドからコンテンツを追加したり、ブロックの上にアニメーションをつけたり、画像の形を変えたりすることができる。また、グリッド機能を使えば、ブロックを簡単にレイアウトして整理す

Ever since the 20s, the world has slowly adapted to accommodate cars. In a lot of ways though,

20年代以来、世界は少しずつ自動車に適応してきた。いろいろな意味で、

North America was the perfect place for them to really put the pedal to the metal.

北米は、彼らが本気でペダルを踏み込むのに最適な場所だった。

The huge distances between cities and states, the fact that America itself and Canada were so new, and entire cities could be built just a hundred years ago, compared to Europe, where cities were constructed for thousands of years, combined with a bunch of poor coverage of railway lines, meant that this land was ripe for highways and road networks. And if the country's cities weren't built yet, most cities weren't very large by the time cars were coming along.

都市間や州間の距離が非常に遠く、何千年もかけて都市が建設されたヨーロッパに比べ、アメリカ自体やカナダは非常に新しく、わずか100年前に都市全体が建設されたこともあり、鉄道路線のカバー率が低いことも相まって、この土地は高速道路や道路網の機が熟していた。また、この国の都市がまだ建設されていなかったとしても、自動車が登場する頃には、ほとんどの都市はそれほど大きくはなかった。

And all these cities' prosperity came at the same time as the rise of the automobile.

そして、これらの都市の繁栄はすべて、自動車の台頭と同時期にもたらされた。

Think of LA, the entire city is built by roads, and LA's boom came too with the boom of cars in the 50s. But then fast forward to the 90s, cars, and all the suffocating infrastructure they needed, were deeply in place. City planners knew that accommodating them above everything else was the best way to ensure growth and boost the local economy. Instead of the dense, close-together cities that you can find in Europe, Japan, or most of the old world, American cities became far more spread out. They were built around a small central hub where people travelled to work, surrounded by miles and miles of suburbs and highways. It was in the 1990s that these kinds of cities grew the fastest, laying the concrete bedrock for the country that we recognise today.

LAを考えてみてほしい。街全体が道路によって築かれ、LAのブームも50年代の自動車ブームとともに到来した。しかし、90年代に入ると、自動車と、自動車が必要とする息苦しいインフラが深く浸透した。都市計画者たちは、自動車を何よりも優先して受け入れることが、成長を確保し、地域経済を活性化させる最善の方法であることを知っていた。ヨーロッパや日本、あるいは旧世界の大半に見られるような、密集して密接に結びついた都市ではなく、アメリカの都市ははるかに拡散した。都市は、人々が通勤する小さな中心地を中心に建設され、その周囲

But you don't just need roads, you need parking spaces as well. Local American governments became so obsessed with giving cars everything they needed, they wrote minimum parking requirements into the planning and zoning laws. Blocks of flats would need at least one parking spot per apartment.

しかし、道路だけでなく駐車スペースも必要だ。アメリカの地方自治体は、自動車に必要なものをすべて与えることに執着し、駐車場の最低条件を計画や区画整理の法律に書き込んだ。アパートのブロックには、アパート1戸につき少なくとも1台の駐車場が必要だった。

Businesses would need a certain amount of parking spaces based on the size of the building.

企業は、建物の大きさに応じて一定の駐車スペースを必要とする。

Even churches were required to build one parking space for every five seats. Today, the highest estimates say there are over 2 billion parking spots in the USA. Tons of roads in the US don't even bother adding sidewalks, why bother if everyone's driving anyway? All of these roads and parking spaces are plain ugly and depressing to live around. It's what makes European cities look like this, and American cities look like this. But most importantly, these changes were awful for kids. The most obvious problem is how dangerous they are if you're not in a car.

教会でさえ、5席につき1台の駐車スペースを作ることが義務付けられていた。現在、アメリカには20億台以上の駐車スペースがあると言われている。どうせみんな車で移動するのだから、わざわざ歩道を作る必要はないだろう。このような道路や駐車スペースはすべて、醜く、住んでいて憂鬱になるものばかりだ。それがヨーロッパの都市をこんな風にし、アメリカの都市をこんな風にするのだ。しかし最も重要なのは、これらの変化は子供たちにとってひどいものだということだ。最も明白な問題は、車に乗っていない場合にどれだけ危険かということだ。

Having the majority of your world dominated by fast-moving death machines made walking around hazardous, not to mention full of pollution that you're breathing in everywhere you go. I mean, the rise of asthma is just one point, but even ignoring that, it makes the whole outside world so much more boring anyway. Any kid wanting to play outside can only find the same grey roads, green lawns, for miles in any direction. That's if they were even allowed to explore outside by themselves. Kids also lost their independence because of this. If you grew up in the countryside, you could walk for miles in any direction. In a city, public transport would give you pretty much unlimited access beyond where your own two legs could take you. But the majority of kids in America grew up in cookie-cutter car cities that became so common in the 90s. These suburban kids were either driven by their parents or they didn't get out at all. It was kind of alright for those lucky few with parents rich enough in money and time to take them places, but the next decade would make sure that rarely applied. The 2000s. You see, the 2000s didn't just continue the trends we've been talking about. They took them to the next level. Instead of just cars, we saw the rise of the SUV.

世界の大半が高速で移動するデスマシーンに支配されているため、歩き回るのは危険だし、行く先々で公害を吸い込んでいるのは言うまでもない。喘息の増加はその一点に過ぎないが、それを無視しても、とにかく外の世界全体が退屈になった。外で遊びたい子供は、どこまで行っても同じ灰色の道、緑の芝生しか見つからない。自分で外を探検することさえ許されていればの話だが。そのせいで子供たちは自立心も失った。田舎で育てば、何キロでもどこまでも歩いて行けた。都会では、公共交通機関があれば、自分の足で行ける範囲を超えて、ほとんど無制限に行

It wasn't enough for Americans to just own a normal car anymore. Everyone started buying much larger, more dangerous cars which took up entire roads by themselves. Cities responded by widening lanes, making bigger parking spaces and generally giving cars even more room than they were already taking up. SUVs take more fuel as well because they're moving way more metal than necessary, so the US needed more gas stations and oil as well. When you think of an American mom taking their kids to soccer practice, you instinctively imagine them cruising along in an

アメリカ人は普通の車を所有するだけでは物足りなくなった。誰もがもっと大きくて危険な車を買い始め、道路全体を占有するようになった。都市はこれに対応するため、車線を広げ、駐車スペースを広くし、一般的に自動車がすでに占有していた以上のスペースを確保した。SUVは必要以上に金属を動かすため、燃料も多く消費する。アメリカ人の母親が子供たちをサッカーの練習に連れて行くとき、あなたは本能的にSUVでクルージングする姿を想像するだろう。

SUV. Today, there's so many of them that they're already cancelling out all the eco-friendly changes that car manufacturers have made to vehicles over the past few decades. Meanwhile, the stranger danger craze was still going strong. Kids lost even more of their independence to misguided ideas about health and safety. Today, with all of the mental health issues we're seeing, it clearly shows how wrong that was. It's much more dangerous in the long run to leave your kid unprepared for the world by suffocating their development and forcing them inside, looking at screens. But it was in the late 2000s that the worst change for kids came.

SUV。今日では、自動車メーカーが過去数十年にわたって自動車に施してきた環境に配慮した変更をすべて帳消しにしてしまうほど、SUVの台数は増えている。一方、見知らぬ人の危険ブームはまだ続いていた。子供たちは、健康と安全に関する誤った考えのために、さらに多くの自立心を失った。今日、私たちが目にしている精神衛生上の問題を見れば、それがいかに間違っていたかがよくわかる。子供の成長を窒息させ、無理やり家の中でスクリーンを見させることで、社会に出る準備をさせないままにしておくことの方が、長い目で見ればはるかに危険なの

The economic recession of 2008 forced a change that had been coming for years, the death of the stay-at-home mom. As tens of millions of fathers lost their jobs and their savings, it became truly impossible for normal families to support themselves on one income.

2008年の経済不況は、専業主婦の死という、何年も前から訪れていた変化を余儀なくさせた。何千万人もの父親が職を失い、貯蓄を失ったことで、普通の家庭が1人の収入で自活することは本当に不可能になった。

While the news might have framed this as empowering, you can doubt that kids saw it in the same way. With millions more families needing both parents to work, nobody was left to drive their kids anywhere that wasn't school in the morning. The last lifeline that tons of kids had to the outside world disappeared, and their lives became a grind of boring schoolwork and an even more boring time at home. This is saying that it takes a village to raise a child.

ニュースではこれを力づけるような枠組みで報道したかもしれないが、子供たちが同じように捉えたかどうかは疑わしい。両親が共働きでなければならない家庭が何百万と増えたことで、朝の学校以外の場所に子供を車で連れて行く人はいなくなった。多くの子供たちが持っていた外の世界との最後の命綱が消え、退屈な学校の勉強と、さらに退屈な家庭での時間が続く生活になった。これは、子供を育てるには村が必要だと言っているのだ。

Mum and dad can't be there all the time, so who's left to step in and fill the gap when they aren't there? And unfortunately for many families, this is no longer a viable option.

パパとママがいつもそこにいることはできない。では、パパとママがいないとき、誰がその穴を埋めるのだろうか？そして残念ながら、多くの家族にとって、これはもはや実行可能な選択肢ではない。

The cities that people live in today aren't built with that in mind, as they lost the usual gathering places like churches or parks which were swallowed up by car infrastructure. Starbucks,

教会や公園のような人が集まる場所がなくなり、車のインフラに飲み込まれてしまったからだ。スターバックス

McDonalds, and so only places like malls and giant chain stores were left. Slowly each lost refuge for children was blocked off. Towns installed spikes and bolts everywhere, putting an end to skateboarding and fun, or even just for humans to exist in those spaces at all. Shops and other businesses even installed special alarms which make high-pitched noises that only kids can hear. The websites selling these literally call them teenager repellents. When the malls finally died with the advent of online shopping, it was the final nail in the coffin. As depressing as it was, the mall was the last social gathering spot for millions of children around the world. Now, it's in the virtual space. People shut in in their bedrooms, windows closed, isolated from their communities. No free play, no exploring, no social dynamics, just consuming content and being yet another iPad kid. I mean, never mind that these measures were only put in place because society had destroyed pretty much every other outlook for kids. Things like video games and social media might have felt like a saviour for kids. Finally, it gave them some form of interaction with the outside world. In reality though, it's probably been the most destructive and damaging development for kids in history. We saw social media really take off in the early 2010s, which was precisely the same time that the mental health issues in young people shot up. Without any other outlets to explore and learn about the world and themselves, young people were almost forced into relying on social media. Everyone knows that social media gives a much more negative view of things than you'd get from talking to people in real life. The algorithms just push whatever gets the most engagement so they can show people more ads. This constant stream of negativity warps their mindsets. They start comparing themselves to others, getting lost in a world of visualised social standing and appearances, but they're never good enough. Their lives are boring and isolated. If there's any justice, the number one thing that Mark Zuckerberg will be known for, amongst all the other tech giant elites, are their crimes against the next generation of kids.

マクドナルドのような、ショッピングモールや巨大チェーン店だけが残された。子どもたちの逃げ場は徐々に失われていった。街はいたるところにスパイクやボルトを設置し、スケートボードや遊びはおろか、人間がそのスペースに存在することすらできなくなった。店やその他の企業は、子供たちにしか聞こえない甲高い音を出す特別なアラームまで設置した。これを販売するウェブサイトは、文字通りティーンエイジャー忌避剤と呼んでいる。オンライン・ショッピングの出現によってモールがついに消滅したとき、それは棺桶に釘を刺すような最後の出来事だっ

The iPad kids. The effects of this are plain to see. Since 2010, there's been a 145% increase in teenage depression for girls and a 161% increase in boys. Anxiety is through the roof, nearly doubling in US adults aged between 18 and 25, and it's not really that hard to see why.

iPadキッズ。その影響は目に見えている。2010年以降、10代のうつ病は女子で145％、男子で161％増加している。不安は頂点に達し、18歳から25歳の米国の成人ではほぼ倍増している。

Stripped of the crucial development kids need to face the world, they're left unprepared for its many challenges. And of course, we can't ignore the elephant in the room. Kids today are going through an existential crisis, so it makes sense that they'd be showing the symptoms of it.

子供たちが世界に立ち向かうために必要な重要な発達を奪われたままでは、子供たちは多くの困難に対して何の準備もできないまま取り残されてしまう。もちろん、部屋の中の象を無視することはできない。現代の子供たちは実存的危機を経験しているのだ。

As they grow up, they're bombarded with the fact that their lives probably won't be as good as their parents. They probably won't be able to afford a house. They will have a much harder time building a family or even finding people to connect with. The social contract that previous generations bought into has disappeared. It's easy to treat the mental health problems that we see today as their own isolated issue, but in many ways, they're the natural response to what kids are facing. At this point, it might feel a little bit hopeless, but the light at the end of the tunnel is that we're all catching on to these mistakes. We're slowly realising that you don't need to make your kids terrified of strangers. It took decades for people to finally question that absurd narrative. People are waking up to the dangers of social media, the lack of free play in kids, and how addictive and destructive it is to keep kids isolated in a safe little box in their room, staring at a screen endlessly for hours every single day. I mean, how many young people today, how many of your friends that you know, would actually let their children become heavy technology users? Even with cars, despite how embedded they've become, the pendulum is slowly swinging the other way. Young people who've travelled and experienced life in cities that aren't dominated by them know the difference that it can make. We're not going to instantly solve the many challenges that young people face because of the mistakes of the past, but before too long, the generation that grew up with these problems and actually understands them will be in the driving seat, and hopefully, by some miracle, they'll be able to actually fix them and know the value of making their kids' lives better than their own.

成長するにつれて、彼らは両親のような良い生活は送れないだろうという事実を突きつけられる。家を買う余裕もないだろう。家庭を築くのも、心を通わせる人を見つけるのも、ずっと難しくなる。前の世代が信じていた社会契約は消滅してしまったのだ。今日見られるメンタルヘルスの問題を、それ自体単独の問題として扱うのは簡単だが、多くの点で、子供たちが直面している問題に対する自然な反応なのだ。現時点では、少し絶望的に感じるかもしれないが、トンネルの先の光は、私たち全員がこうした過ちに気づきつつあるということだ。子供たちを見知らぬ