When did riding ur bike to school or work become weird??
I think when the world became extremely paranoid. I rode my bike to school for what seems like my entire childhood and prior to that I walked with my siblings. Was the world a safer place back then? I think it probably had the same amount of pedos and potential kidnappers that exist today.
It had to be a bitterly cold day for us to get a ride in the car and this was rare. Also, almost all of my friends in elementary and high school rode bikes to school as well and spent the afternoons riding around looking for their friends so they could start up some sort of sport. I think we can at least in part blame technology because when I was a kid we didn't have very much of that and even the video games we had were not anywhere near as interesting as going outside.
I don't think it is our imaginations when we think / see that the younger generation is a lot fatter than previous ones. It's only going to get worse too.
Yeah I have to agree with you - video games have had a detrimental affect on kids childhood as well as everything digital. I was heartened to see on my recent trip to suburban Australia that the kids on mom's street still played cricket on the road just like when I was a kid - but this is certainly not the "norm"