Cellphones were used to make it extraordinarily convenient for busybodies to snitch at all moments. Any increased freedom of the child to roam by virtue of having emergency communication was nixed by the ability for any passer by to immediately call police for unsupervised children without even the inconvenience of driving to a pay phone.

All the places I played alone as a kid: the playground, the rural creek, the open fields. It was inconvenient for adults to snitch me out from there. Not so anymore.