I am a German person having lived in the US and Canada for some time. And for physical safety interesting observations are that German playgrounds would probably be considered too harmful to get approval in the US, whereas electricity / wiring in houses and especially the 110 V power outlets seem really neglectful to my German eyes, like an accident waiting to happen.

But, German kids survive German playgrounds and American children are not all electrocuted by 110V power outlets.

Another interesting angle to look at this is the legal system. When I first came to the US I was really astonished to see TV ads not only for attorneys, but also for attorneys looking for participants in class-action law suits. So from an economical perspective, civil live can be 'mined' for cases worth pursuing by the attorneyship. I am not ruling out that Germany might have examples with similar dynamics but definitely its not as strong, the compensation payments lower and the possibilities for an attorney to make a huge profit from a case much lower. I think case-law might also make it easier for new classes of 'harm' to surface in courts. After a couple of of occasions, you have precedents whereas in a country with civil law you might have courts refuse a liability if there was no basis for it in the civil law.

Overall, I do think that the notion of psychological harm shouldn't be neglected. Its easy to ridicule it citing cases like "Statue in underpants". Institutions would do best I think, if they established internal processes that would resolve problems gracefully and stop harm early on before having it escalated to the courts.

It's the wild growth of certain sorts of sensitivities that certain sorts of people are finding a problem. Nobody remembers the "good old days" as a time of hedonism, where everybody did their own thing, where beliefs and behaviors weren't policed, and couldn't result in you being ostracized socially. In the good old days, you could not only get canceled, you could get lynched.

There are countless examples of this kind of behaviour across all of society now. Writing this off with a racist strawman argument that you just invented sounds like a bad faith response to me. Which honestly is one of the tactics (purposefully taking the least generous interpretation) that is so popular among the silence-is-violence crowd.

The issue of "dangerous" is much more subjective. That one is going to take a little while longer to play out. After all, what is wrong with increased sensitivity to "harm"? Then the next step becomes "what do we do to correct or mitigate the harm?"

The effects of eliminating all hierarchy in education might be good? Hiring based on demographics rather than qualifications might be good? Who knows?

Perhaps when policy becomes linked to the new notions of "harm" is the point when it becomes dangerous?

The new mediocre ruling class uses criminally charged language ("harm", "suffering", "effect on people", "consequences"). There are "reporting" links everywhere. Reporting others is encouraged like in the German Democratic Republic.

All this has changed drastically if you compare it to 10 years ago. The question you ask is interesting though: Are younger people being used in the social justice power games played by Boomer and Gen X administrators? That would be similar to white consultants lecturing about people of color to boost their incomes.

I think it is a bit of both. Helicopter parenting has made teenagers more fragile and your friendly administrator sees an opportunity to administrate and get power and cash.

In the GDR, the state went large ways to distance themselves from facism and the anti-semitism of the past, while in reality, the jews weren't treated in a reasonable ways, couldn't get their property back and such nuisances.

My mom was a teacher in the GDR, and she made the mistake of asking "How are the jews in the GDR doing now?".