9 Responses to 9 Million Views of YouTube Music’s Free-Range Kid (on the Subway, No Less!)

  1. Kenny M Felder August 28, 2016 at 12:30 pm #

    Very nice!

  2. Silver Wolf August 28, 2016 at 12:39 pm #

    Good to see. The beginning of a cultural shift back to sanity, one can hope.

  3. elizabeth August 28, 2016 at 2:20 pm #

    This ad pops up when i play piano tiles.

  4. Ceridwen August 29, 2016 at 8:03 am #

    I get the short version of this ad in Sim City Build-It. I like it, and it did cross my mind that this is a very free-range ad.

  5. Anna August 29, 2016 at 11:24 am #

    I’m honestly not sure what’s such a big deal about kids in the subway. When I lived in Toronto (about 15 years ago) young kids took transit on their own or with friends all the time. At the private school where I taught, many or most of the girls were commuting to school by subway from quite early on. Is it really so unusual in New York to see kids on the subway? Presumably so, since you got the reaction you did, Lenore, but it seems odd to me. My experience has been that big-city parents on the whole tend to give kids more freedom than suburban parents.

  6. sexhysteria August 29, 2016 at 11:25 am #

    I don’t understand why there are over 20,000 dislikes. What’s to dislike?

  7. SKL August 29, 2016 at 3:35 pm #

    It might have been slightly more daring for me to send my 9yo alone to a port-a-potty in a very crowded place yesterday. 😛 Those things are scary!

  8. EricS August 30, 2016 at 3:46 pm #

    Nice! Confidence is key. So is being smart.

  9. EricS August 30, 2016 at 3:52 pm #

    @Anna: it’s not so much the place, but the times we live in. I started taking public transit on my own when I was 9. My little brother would tag along, and he was only 7. That was the norm back then. It still should be the norm now, but because of paranoia, and the internet spreading the paranoia, kids taking public transit (anywhere) is suddenly a “bad” thing. Nothing has changed, except for people’s mentality and perception. Which again, is easily manipulated by media these days. And remember, sex, violence, and fear are great marketing tools. The more you click, the more you share, the more money these companies make. Doesn’t matter to them how it’s done. Think about it, which would you be more likely to click on? “Child wins Spelling Bee”, or “Child gets attack by a swarm of bees”? 😉 At the same time, the more we share positive things about childhood, and raising children, the more we can set a trend to go back to how things were before all of the hysteria.