People in the late 80's and early 90's became paranoid about child safety, even as society was getting safer for children, because of largely made-up paranoia like child predators lurking in neighborhoods.
Many places these days are so paranoid that people will call police if children are out playing in a neighborhood unattended. Totally unlike the 80's. Others are trying (and sometimes succeeding) to pass laws specifically clarifying that it's legal to let kids roam neighborhoods. I don't know who I'm following on Twitter who mentioned this, but some place just passed such a law. There's been a "rewilding" movement for some time now, and people like Haidt are emphasizing how terrible it is for psychosocial development for kids not to be out with other kids socializing without direct parental oversight.
I agree with you broadly, but it is perhaps possible that increasing paranoia was causally related to reduced numbers of dead or missing children. I could not quickly find statistics about this, but it would be interesting to see a study.
