philipp flenker

As I am watching Season 5 of Stranger Things, I am catching up on reviews and recaps for past seasons, given it has been years since the last season. What amazes me is that Americans bring up very frequently just how plain weird it is to them that the kids of the series are roaming around the way they do. Commenters then reassure each other that it's a realistic depiction of the 80s, because back then, this was the norm!

What I find wild about that is that from my perspective there is absolutely nothing odd, or even wrong, with how the children are moving around, unsupervised. They are old enough, they live in a sheltered small town, they're usually with friends, so there is absolutely zero problem there. The idea that people would not allow their kids in the depicted age e.g. to take a bike to visit their friends is hard to imagine for me.