Is children playing with other children around their age who live in the same neighborhood still something kids are allowed to do these days? Can kids still go over to other people's houses and hang out as friends?
Even with my genetic predecessors being bad helicopter parents, this was something I had and cherished. However, things have developed to the point where isolation has become so extreme that becomes a legitimate question.
The only reactionary approved social community and organization we can think of (beyond Trump rallies) is ones local church, and that seems to be a marriage of convenience to neutralize all competitive cultural pressures. Beyond that the sheer magnitude of fear and hatred people have for one another (esp. in white suburbia) is palpable (source: we grew up in suburbia and witnessed the quality shift from "neighborhoods" to "competing feifdoms" in real time).
(Once the neutralization of all competing cultural ideals is complete, I doubt that marriage of convenience between the two major reactionary social forces will remain due to conflicting values and priorities).
So we need to reiterate and rephrase the above question. With third spaces (esp. for kids) all but abolished and an extreme culture of paranoia and constant fear in the US (particularly white suburbia) where people living adjacent to you aren't seen as neighbors but as competitors and threats, compounded by how the narrative that children are almost universally under attack as a key political scare tactic; are children allowed to socialize in person anymore on the basis of people in a similar age living nearby, and are children allowed to visit one another at their respective homes?
outside of public parks and housing developments' shared recreation areas, the majority of places only want paying customers. unattended kids are treated with the same contempt as the homeless.
some places even go as far as to install "youth repellent noise generators like "the mosquito" to annoy them away.