As incredible as it sounds, when I was 12 I did not have "the ability to immediately have police or paramedics" and by some great miracle, I seem to have survived into my 40s! And the country was actually a much more dangerous place then than it is now, given violent crime statistics. I would leave my house at the crack of dawn, ride my bicycle for miles, and return home for lunch and then when it got dark. All without a mobile phone. I know, totally insane, right?

Literally survivorship bias.

True, however, I think survivorship bias tends to imply that a relatively small number of the elements pass through the system, thereby making the data gained from said elements biased. It's like looking at only elements that end up 3 standard deviations higher, and then trying to make remarks on the whole system from there. In this case, the vast majority of children will never ever be harmed walking home from school to the point of death, the mean of the normal distribution can be taken to represent the system accurately. I don't know my logical fallacies enough to name this one, but I think you have this inverted.

>There's an astounding difference between "knowing where my daughter is" and "enabling my daughter to call for help (e.g., 911) if she's in an emergency."

And why is that important, since we've managed to survive without that capability for several tens of thousands of years in much worse circumstances than a modern city?

An interesting idea a roommate thought up:

So 100 years ago, a guy kidnapping your daughter (just an example of anything that could only be resolved by you knowing where you daughter was) isn't a serious worry, since that's a 0.01% risk as opposed to the 2% risk your daughter gets sick with whatever and dies.

Now, it's that same 0.01% risk compared to a 0.00003% risk thanks to advancements in modern medicine, so we worry about it much more.

Because we are programmed to do everything to make sure we survive and our children survive. Even when the threat level is super low it's hard to lose the instinct. Hence why terrorism scares people who then go and buy a lottery ticket. We're bad at probability!

>Because we are programmed to do everything to make sure we survive and our children survive.

Makes sense at first, but I don't think we are. I see other cultures (including western ones), and even the US at 70s and earlier, that don't do the same "everything" at all.

I think what we are, in some countries, is conditioned by hysterical media and hysterical society, to over-protect our children to the point of social pathology.

A $10 dumb phone without any service allows for 911 calls.

That just seems silly. Not everything needs 911, and payphones aren't all that common anymore. Not to mention the missed opportunity to teach about responsible use... and the opportunity to enjoy the convenience as parents. For example, a kid calling home to let them know when a school event is over, especially if the child can leave early.