gestures at the outside I am not surprised. Outside is a McDonald/Starbucks laden hellscape. There are a dwindling number of places for kids to get enrichment outside their own homes. People in general spend increasingly long times in front of screens for various activities. Gaming is an activity that they can do alone or with their friends that doesn't require them to pay for things to enjoy them. Some of them don't even recognize that there is a real world cost for things like vbucks and so on.

Toy stores are few and far between. We don't watch media that has significant commercials anymore. What did we expect?

[–] Stern@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

The death of the third place has been happening in a thousand ways for a while now. Fewer and fewer places you can just be without paying to do so. Even now we see one of the last ones, libraries, targeted more and more by certain groups.

[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Thank you. I knew there was a name for this phenomenon but didn't know what it was. I'm also pissed about the libraries. I don't understand why people want to get rid of them.