However, I have a lot of friends with children and some of their takes are completely irrational to me.
“Let the kids WALK three blocks to school? Not anymore, things aren’t like what we grew up with. It’s scary out there!”
Exactly. Violent crime, etc has been on a general and significant downward trend since we were kids (80s and 90s). It’s not what we grew up with - it’s significantly safer. The media drives a tremendous amount of anxiety and it’s extremely detrimental to parents, kids, and society overall.
It used to be “sex sells” (still does) but more and more it’s “fear sells”.
One truth in this regard: people will straight up call the cops, or worse, CPS, on unattended children. In their perception that things are scary, people manifest their fear and become villains with "good intentions."
And, to the hilarious dead response to my first comment, I'm just gonna repeat this back to you: "You're one of billions of ultimately meaningless voices."
And there will never be any meaningful consequences leveled against those people, empowering bad actors far beyond any meaningful social sanction they could ever have generated by themselves.
Making sure concern trolls and the hysterical can't fuck up a working community is something poorer societies (SE Asia, Continental Europe) inherently do better than richer ones (UK, US), mainly because the former simply can't afford to indulge it.