There was nothing in the house to make me want to stay in. Nothing like a console or PC, best thing were books on days when going out would be deadly (exceptionally hot or cold). I was going out by necessity, initially knowing and as I grew up hoping that some other kids will be doing the same. And from that large pool of "random" kids I'd get very close to a few, become friends and then have some more on-demand negotiated fun instead of opportunistic. This lead us on hundreds of adventures anywhere we could physically go for it.
Before we even consider how walkable or dense a city is, how safe, how permissive modern laws are of letting kids just be, etc. the questions is, how many kids or parents stop short of running into any of these problems because the kids have all they think they need inside some type of electronic device?
So I got a bit of childhood before receiving those (pretty scary stuff if I think about it - exploring holes that looked like trenches, that were dig up by workers to put water pipes in them, or exploring an old, ruined house) - living in a typical communist-era block of flats community.
But a year or so after receiving computer I started spending less and less time outside and more on computers, basically making me socially isolated except my two closest colleagues. Nowadays my two daughters are more social than I am, but I like computers too much.
The inside wasn't boring so much as parents didn't want their kids inside and requiring attention or supervision. TVs, tables and gaming consoles means they can be inside without this burden, so it became an easy default.
This was still in the era of SNES and Sega, but even those got boring after a while.
while here in Europe I have within 10 minutes walk like 3-5 playgrounds for kids to play, in China I would have 0 even if we walked for half an hour, there are literally no playgrounds for kids at all, you will find exercise equipment for adults/old people in parks, but NOTHING for children and then they are surprised why people don't have kids in China
the fun with kids in China is meant to go to mall, pay fee for some amusement park and let kids play there, same with any other kid oriented facility, come, pay ticket so kid can play, but no public playgrounds, heck it's even difficult to find public football/basketball playgrounds, again in Europe I have at least 2-3 basketball courts around 10 minutes walk from home, in China impossible
been there last summer already with bigger kids and they had literally nothing to do when visiting in-laws in their miniscule 600-900K town (Beijing suburbs), we found some kids amusement park in walking distance at the end of trip, but nothing to do anywhere, they could walk to park where there was nothing to do for kids, so only time they could do something interesting was walking around Beijing, checking sights, maybe playing pingpong
We found stuff to do last year when we visited Beijing, but we were closer to center city and ya, no playgrounds outside of a few higher end apartment communities. We have a trip planned this summer but the kid is spending 2 weeks in a Chengdu summer camp that is pretty activity loaded.
It was a good time. The arcade especially because if you were good at a game you could keep playing without putting in more money, so we got really good. You can’t do that with arcade games now.
The mall - breathing plastic fumes, looking at overpriced plastic toys, summoning your parents for your every whim.
I know which I'd want for my kids, should I have any (too old & ill now).
My kids are happy that the corn fields around our how turned into a subdivision just after we moved in because now there are kids to play with. However only about 1 in 10 houses have a kid (some have grandkids over on weekends - I didn't count that, and others were the kids live with the other parent half the time get counted half).
It's probably different in the city, where presumably more people are parent-aged. Almost all homeowners I know out by me are over 45 and their children are adults by now.
