Charlotte Alter in Time Magazine:
Molly Moscatiello, age 7, started riding her bike to first grade last year. There’s a crosswalk with no crossing guard, “and I had to look both ways like five times,” she says, two grown-up teeth peeking through the gap in the front of her smile. Sometimes her parents’ friends would drive past and ask if Molly needed a ride, but she’d always wave them off. “I felt a little nervous at first,” she says. “But then after a while I felt comfortable by myself.” Soon, other kids began asking to ride their bikes to school. By the end of first grade, Molly was leading a small cohort of five or six, riding to school together in Little Silver, N.J.
Twenty years ago, this would be as unremarkable as kids eating ice cream or playing soccer. But these days, when only about one in 10 American children walk or bike to school, Molly and her friends are more than just a gaggle of kids on bikes. They’re part of a growing countermovement against the technification of American childhood. Molly’s mother, Holly Moscatiello, is the founder of The Balance Project, a parent-run nonprofit working to rebuild communities to encourage childhood independence and get kids off screens. “We want to make it just as easy to experience life in our community as it is to go on your phone,” Moscatiello says.
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