Another factor in parents over protecting kids came from John Walsh. Now, let me preface by saying no parent should endure what his family had to. But he nearly single-handedly caused what we see today where parents get in trouble for letting their kids walk to school or to the park. People today think everyone is a pedo or a child killer because that's what they were fed in the 80s and 90s.
Perhaps extortionate real estate prices and telework will put some counterbalance to it, but I don't expect this trend to buckle during my lifetime.
Collectivist societies are unique in that they punish individuality. The government decides something and everyone must comply or face extra-judicial and potentially judicial consequences.
Individualistic societies often celebrate individuality. It's not marked by the absence of collective decisions, but that there's tolerance to dissent, or even that dissent is given weight and merit philosophically.
I'd summarize this as, collectivist societies are a proxy for government cohesion; it looks like people have power, but they don't. Individualistic societies retain power in both large numbers of people, but also individuals. The government is at competition with it's power to groups of people, which theoretically plays a role in keeping it in check.
By collectivistic priorities I simply meant that given trade offs between individual and collective orders of priority, the collective takes priority, often at the expense of individual rights.
America has traditionally had classical liberal ideals of individualism, as laid out by Locke, Rousseau and Franklin chiefly, and later others. What we've seen in the last few decades is a stronger alignment with continental European mainstream thought and politics. Perhaps because cities and demographics have pushed things in that direction. But I think safetyism is also a strong component.
Sure, you could get a splinter from the wood if its not maintained, or have a fall and get scraped up, but the risks are low, the benefits (learning to not be a fucking muppet, learning to cope with falls) are high.
I fear the same pattern repeating with Patreon-powered journalism and Substack.
Once the 24 hour news stations came out, there is still 30 minutes of national news, but much, much more filler. This is mostly fear peddling. 40 years of that and it's no wonder the entire population is a little off.
There is a great movie from the 70s called Network that predicted the slide of society in this direction.