Is never talk to strangers actually good advice for children

[linuxfan66]

I see never talk to strangers really good advice for children or an oversimplification of western isolationism.

Because you explicitly ignore it a lot of contexts anyway and as far I can tell it's not said outside of the western world...

[Aytex]

hey stranger im replying to your thread

[Curufinwe_wins]

I see never talk to strangers really good advice for children or an oversimplification of western isolationism.

Because you explicitly ignore it a lot of contexts anyway and as far I can tell it's not said outside of the western world...

No advice is good advice outside of context.

 

It is probably less harmful long term than them trusting everyone implicitly, but remember most abductions/assaults etc are perpetrated by family/friends to the children.

 

A more appropriate suggestion (while still being an oversimplification) is to only speak to strangers when parents are around.

[ForeseenVisionz]

its not so much ignore as it is be careful and aware of your surroundings like don't take candy from them or go do this and that just because someone said so.

edit: also 99% people seem to be evil these days so u cant really trust them either way unfortunately. 

[Guest]

It really depends on what the situation you're in

The only strangers I talk to are the police when I'm lost

But most police are corrupt in my country so it makes things worse

[SansVarnic]

I see never talk to strangers really good advice for children or an oversimplification of western isolationism.

Because you explicitly ignore it a lot of contexts anyway and as far I can tell it's not said outside of the western world...

You obviously have no children of your own. Otherwise you would not post this.

 

*edit

My children will not speak those they do not know unless I or their mother are around, then again my children do not go anywhere that I cannot have eye contact at any given time. (they are all young children)

When my children get older they will not be allowed to date till they are 20 as I have no need to commit murder of young teenage boys trying to take away my baby girls. Nuff said.

 

(Disclaimer i would never commit murder /sarscasm to the fullest)

[BoredErica]

 

edit: also 99% people seem to be evil these days so u cant really trust them either way unfortunately. 

That's not true based upon crime statistics. Dr. Steven Pinker writes about this in depth in 'Better Angels of Our Nature'. There is less and less crime, not more. Violence is actually slowly going out of fashion.

[Mattrixx]

Well it is much better than trying to teach a kid the intricacies of human weirdnesses. They are too young to understand something like "Don't talk to strangers that are being nice and giving you candy unless they don't look like they want to abduct you and there are lots of other people around.", while something simple like "Don't talk to strangers!" will cover more bases than not. Yeah it's not the greatest system, but there's not much else you can teach tiny humans with undeveloped brains.

 

They should learn that police and security (mall cops and whatnot) are good and helpful figures though of course. Kids do need to learn to ask for help when they need it.

[linuxfan66]

You obviously have no children of your own. Otherwise you would not post this.

I was asking for logical thought about society and attitudes as a whole. Potentially good and bad ideas can change come interesting and grey societal issues

[ForeseenVisionz]

That's not true based upon crime statistics. Dr. Steven Pinker writes about this in depth in 'Better Angels of Our Nature'. There is less and less crime, not more. Violence is actually slowly going out of fashion.

huh...well ill be damned  :huh:

[Godlygamer23]

I was asking for logical thought about society and attitudes as a whole. Potentially good and bad ideas can change come interesting and grey societal issues

The issue is that you have no idea who's out there. Your child could talk to someone that could snatch them right up and you could never see them again.

[Curufinwe_wins]

I was asking for logical thought about society and attitudes as a whole. Potentially good and bad ideas can change come interesting and grey societal issues

Well in those terms.... The 'don't talk to strangers' is a way of enforcing general pre-conventional morality (children follow those instructions out of fear/respect of parents not out of fear of strangers). As they get older, enforcing postconventional morality instead of preconventional is better for development as a person, but is significantly harder to do with younger minds.

 

See Kohlberg stages of morality.

[Lotus]

Stranger Danger is, in my opinion, a horrible ruining force when unleashed on children. It's a huge cause of anxiety and social problems among youths. The vast majority of people are good, honest people. Even the ones who aren't good, well, they aren't bad, just morally apathetic. The odds of actually finding someone morally bad is obscenely low. The idea that a stranger is out to get them, and warning them of said stranger, is downright mind warping and can cripple a child's ability to interact socially and make new friends. IMO the downsides vastly outweigh the microscopic chance of actually meeting one of these dangerous strangers. Stranger Danger doesn't belong in my house.

 

edit: you DO have to be prepared to deal with conflicting, and oftentimes wrong viewpoints. For instance, someone telling your child that if they're gay they'll go to hell. That's downright fightening to be exposed to, but this zealous nut isn't a necessarily bad person, just misguided. You do need to be aware of these kinds of scenarios and prepare for them. This is NOT stranger danger, just, well, wrong viewpoints.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Lotus

[Delusional Phil]

I believe the better way of keeping your children from being kidnapped is to tell him/her : Don't follow strangers and don't receive food/drinks from strangers ...

[GoldSrc]

When my children get older they will not be allowed to date till they are 20.

Good luck with that .

[SansVarnic]

I was asking for logical thought about society and attitudes as a whole. Potentially good and bad ideas can change come interesting and grey societal issues

I made an edit to my reply.

But Yes to answer your question, is a very good thing to teach children of any walk of life. Children do not see black and white all they see is grey as they are very curious and want to learn about everything and everyone, want meet and greet any and every person they see. Children are very Innocent up until the age of 8-10 pending on the child. My wife and I do try to teach the finer things (being polite) of interacting with others and to have an open mind and to use practical sense when meeting new people. My children have had the opportunity (just recently) to see first hand what happens when a stranger offering candy looks like and thank God they did the right thing and ran home (they were playing next door with the neighbor kid) and told mom, the neighbor kid's dad called the police naturally.

[Th3 Mans1ay3r]

Lol, growing up in Florida I used common sense on who to talk to and who not to. 

[SansVarnic]

Good luck with that .

Any parent can hope....  

[GoldSrc]

Any parent can hope....  

If you succeed let me know how you did it  .

[handymanshandle]

As an Introvert/ambivert honestly I wish the majority of people (extroverts) would realise that quality is better than quantity. Hence I absolutely think that not trusting strangers is good advice. I guess in certain context it's not that great perhaps "never" is a little too extreme but rather being  wary around people might be more proper. Though I guess in a society (the US) that is highly religious (which honestly makes me dislike living here) the general populous figures that either killing or locking away people is the best way to solve everything when really the first step should be rehabilitation or other ways to solve the issue rather than just allow the issue to occur then either kill them or waste money housing them. 

[BoredErica]

 

huh...well ill be damned   :huh:

Yeah, and I totally get why you feel that way. There are many reasons for this. For example, we live in the world of the internet and instant news. We hear about a ton of attacks because we can communicate much easier. The media LOVES to talk about bad news because it somehow sells.  I believe about 200-300 years ago, hanging a cat and watching it die was a fun pastime by the general public in the US (too lazy to pull up source). Now, just punching a person is seen as overly violent and you can get charged for it. Capital punishment is down, which reflects what we think about violence against criminals. In fact in most developed countries, the death penalty is downright illegal. A good 200 years ago, there was a law in England where a child that exhibits 'strong malice' or practiced witchcraft can be killed by law. We've lost our appetite for slavery. If our standards for what is acceptable behavior is rising faster than our change in behavior, it feels like the world is a worse place when it's the opposite. 

 

That's just on a small scale. On a large scale, massive genocide is getting less and less tolerable. It's now cheaper to buy stuff from other people in the global market than it is to conquer them through war. Where there is war, it's typically civil wars instead of war between nations. Nations have all of their people and resources they can pit against each other and many more people die. It's hard to grasp the numbers because we weren't around over a 100 years ago. And finally, I believe democratic nations have a smaller chance of going to total war. 

 

On top of that, the population of the world is getting larger and larger. To have the same percentage of crime and murders, we need to increase the number of crime and murders that happen in the world. If it's even stagnant, then crime rates are falling.

 

 

 

http://www.fewresources.org/uploads/1/0/5/2/10529860/6607123_orig.jpeg?310

 

And of course, human history has existed for longer than since the 1990s. It's possible to cherry pick times where rates were rising, but in the bigger picture it's falling. This isn't a guarentee that it will continue to fall forever, or that wars will eventually just disappear. This isn't a guarantee that we won't have a nuclear war in the next 100 years. But at least right now, I think being all doom and gloom is being overly pessimistic.  We live in an amazing time of amazing technology and information and communication. We have a lot of work ahead of us but I have hope.

 

You probably don't want to watch an hour lecture on this, so here's a 5 minute video with nice graphics and a cool background music spoken with a cool accent in case you're interested:

[GBELILREESE]

I see never talk to strangers really good advice for children or an oversimplification of western isolationism.

Because you explicitly ignore it a lot of contexts anyway and as far I can tell it's not said outside of the western world...

 

Don't know if you got children, but it's sort of common sense, and I've seen that advice used in other places.

 

It's not like American parents are the only parents who'd tell their kids not to talk to strangers.