I'm also in the US, in a city in a populous state and I've never seen that, as a matter of fact it counts as child abuse in my state as well. Why don't you mention where you live and what state you see this within? Is it because what you're seeing is anecdotal in some particularly rich area? I can assure you leaving children under 16 unsupervised is illegal in most states.

It is actually telling you didn’t even check this. It’s because you are so 100% convinced it’s true. This shows how bad the situation is in some places.

> I can assure you leaving children under 16 unsupervised is illegal in most states.

This is absolutely untrue. Only 3 states have an age specific standard. Most states set no specific limits by age. The bigger problem is the vagueness of the laws we do have in place around child neglect which allows a cop or neighbor to be the biggest determining factor of whether you get a knock on your door.

Citation needed. A kid that's 15.5 yrs old is more than able to be unsupervised for a few hours. c'mon.

The only state that I can find with the oldest age defined is 14 in Illinois (but it's defined as "for an unreasonable period of time").

Most states otherwise don't define it (~38 states), and of the ones that do, it's between 6-10.