Quoted from Methos:My parents dropped me off as well back when I was 16. There is no way in I would do that today with my kids. Hell - my 20 year old went to a metal show a few weeks back and I was nervous as a dog in a Chinese restaurant. With age, comes experience and the knowledge of how full of shit the world (people) really is.
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
Keep in mind that regardless of the ridiculousness over the past couple of years, the long-term trend is steadily decreasing violent crime rates since the 80s in most areas of the country (peak homicide rate/100k pop. was in 1980).
Add to that the fact that we have great tech that didn’t exist when we were kids. Everyone carries a phone, and GPS tracking is easier than ever for both both people (make sure your kids’ phones are connected to your account and use the “Find My Phone” feature if you get anxious) and vehicles (numerous ways to easily keep tabs on their whereabouts).
Bottom line, the ease with which we can surveil our kids (poor things will NEVER know the freedom we did ) plus the crime stats suggests that it’s objectively SAFER now!
I also don’t believe people are any “worse” now than in the past (the fallacy of looking at the past through rose-colored glasses is universal). The long arc of history shows that on balance, humans have ALWAYS been mostly shit, and going back at least as far as Socrates, older generations have always been pessimistic about younger generations.
The data simply doesn’t support the popular “sky is falling” narrative that seems to have so much of the population in such a stranglehold of anxiety; we are still a long way from the 1991 peak, when I was 17 and on the loose with no pager, no cell, and a nonfunctional odo in my car:
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