Where do the children play?

> Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult

This is really not representative for other Western countries. Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do.

> In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered.

I think the author should stick with "kids in the USA" when he means that.

Where are you from? I would say that seems accurate for Ireland, for instance.

In Figure 13, there are some Western countries listed for how much children can roam, and Ireland is indeed near the bottom.

But the Netherlands, Nordics and Germany are still very much on the other side of the spectrum in these studies.

See for instance the books "The Happiest Kids in the World", "Achtung Baby" and "There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather" about raising children in the Netherlands, Berlin and Sweden respectively.

Those places are very much not like the USA yet. Though as the article points out, they are definitely going in that direction.