While neighborhood games aren’t played much, IMO, it’s because organized sports for kids have advanced to amazing levels. You might not see kids out playing in your neighborhood, but it’s probably because they have fields now, time consuming team sports and even when they don’t have practice or games, they still like to hang out at the fields to play on their own. When I as a kid, our town had a couple of soccer fields. Now, we’ve got at least 4 within 5 minutes drive, 2 within walking distance with several fields. Entire complexes for multiple sports.
Sure kids now play video games, so did we, but they barely watch tv at all. They spend about the same time in front of a tv as we did as kids, but for them, it’s social with online gaming.
Considering today’s environment, house tightly packed neighborhoods are now and the way people drive in them, plus how lawsuit-happy people tend to be now, that’s why you don’t see kickball played in the street. Fewer windows get broken, fewer kids get hit by cars and the kids are still active. Most here are in pretty amazing shape. We have very nice parks with some crazy structures, but that’s mainly for very young kids. At 4 kids start playing sports and the fields are where they spend their time. Soccer, football, basketball, baseballl, swim teams, volleyball, cycling...there’s a lot more going on these days and it’s more popular than ever. Paintball has taken the place of dirt clod wars and air soft instead of bb guns.
They aren’t in the streets because they have better options now.
Where I live at least, organized sports were a bigger deal when I was a kid than they are now.
The only sports that have seem to have increased in participation are soccer and competitive martial arts, everything else seems to have fallen off significantly despite the regional population doubling.
