Where do the children play?

As a society we find violence or harm against children to be extremely shocking and tragic. As a society we would do almost anything to prevent it.

Giving children the kinds of freedoms discussed in this article would lead to some harm coming to them. Accidents, violence, kidnap, etc.

Therefore, society won't give them those freedoms.

This tendency has been exagerated by mass media in the modern era. Every single case, every piece of anecdata, makes massive headlines and instills the fear into parents everywhere.

It's impossible for society to reverse course because that would mean acknowledging, implicitly or explicitly, that some level of harm for some children is justified by the developmental benefits to all children of increased freedom.

> Giving children the kinds of freedoms discussed in this article would lead to some harm coming to them. Accidents, violence, kidnap, etc.

Not really most of the violence against children originates from adults within and near the family.

The American public has allowed some rare stories that made it to the news and the Satanic panic of the 80s to form their world view.

A survey in 2021 found that 15% of Americans that's 31 million people believed the government was run by Satan-worshiping pedophiles.

To sum up children do face risks of violence and sexual abuse but it's mostly from trusted people in their environment, the risk of some random person kidnapping a child of the street is rather low.

Now given that society has decided to keep children locked away, letting your kid run around is not really a viable option it's a collective action problem.