Is American society much more frightened now than before?

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I was watching this video on youtube where the host talks about how parents and schools are so afraid of kids pretending to play with toy guns or making gun gesture shapes with their fingers. She talks about it at 6:07 into the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXg9R-O4qj0

However, the idea of suspending or expelling a kid from school for making a gesture like that is just insane. How can anyone view that as a real threat. Or parents afraid of kids playing with nurf guns is dangerous and will lead to violent behavior.

And this is not the only stories I hear coming out of the US lately, there are others a lot recently. Now I am not trying to sound judgmental towards the US, but it seems the whole society has just turned into a scared nation the last few years, just scared of everything really. In a couple of decades from now, it will be like the movie Demolition Man if this keeps going on... but unlike in that movie, in real life another country could totally come and take over the US people because they would be so scared, they wouldn't even know what to do.

The whole country will be conquerable, if they keep becoming more and more afraid of the littlest things. So I am not trying to sound harsh or insulted, but I am legitimately worried.

What do you think? Is it just going to get worse and worse?

I have been saying this on this forum a number of different ways for a number of years.

Some examples from my own life when I was a six years old my parents let me walk by myself for several blocks and take public transportation by myself when I was a tween. Today if somebody sees a 6 year old walking by themselves the police would be called and the parents arrested for child abuse.
27 Things '60s Kids Did That Would Horrify Us Now

When Playgrounds Were Deadly
It would be best if you did click the link and looked at the pictures

Enough Ok Boomer ranting for today.

Great pictures, Aspartame. I remember playing on the playground like those pictured. There's one little girl in a dress that could have been me.

I don't know if I'd call it frightened, but there is an overwhelming urge to be kept safe from everything.

Well it seems that overwhelming urge to keep safe from absolutely everything, is just too much fear it sounds like.

People have an insatiable appetite for fear and outrage.

What has changed is that media and authority figures have gotten better at stoking and exploiting that appetite, and using it to substitute their own narratives for people's internal narratives.

It's about control, and it works. It makes people seem stupid, but really they are just following someone else's script.

Well, my Mum took a water pistol off me in the 80s because I was using it as a toy gun. But I'm not sure if many other parents did that.

But now people have more of a platform to discuss ideas and push forward policies.

I think that social media enables people to mobilise much more easily and push things into the mainstream than in the past.

It's easier to whip up more hysteria and fear.

I grew up in the 1970s and I was walking up and down the country roads by myself when I was 7-8 years old. Maybe 2-3 years after that I was biking even further and would often be gone all day in the summer except for meals. Never once did I encounter a pedophile or someone stopping to talk to me with ill intent.

I did start a bad habit at 7-8 in that I would take matches from home and then pick up barely smoked or even sometimes unsmoked cigarettes and smoke them while walking down the roads.

I agree that a lot of "helicopter" parenting is based on fear and it could be argued that the fears are irrational or unfounded. I however don't agree with that argument. Even though there have always been pedophiles, kidnappers and murderers, I absolutely believe that the internet has increased the prevalence of such filth and worthless scum. As such I do believe that the world has changed and that it's less safe for kids to go around in public by themselves.

But there is a difference between cautious parenting and actually being afraid of children who are not doing any harm. A kid making making a gun shape with his fingers in school for example. Why would adults be afraid of that and so they suspend the kid from school. That's not safe parenting. That's actually being afraid of kids who are under 8 years old who have no weapons.

That's just being a wussy, not a safe parental figure, isn't it? I mean do these school teachers still secretly have to have their parents change their diapers too? Obviously not, I am being silly, but I mean is they have to grow up if they are teachers, don't they?

I know what you're saying; however, again present day is more complicated than generations ago. In present times there have been shootings that have occurred in schools. I think it would be best for kids to learn that some things are acceptable some places but not others. I'm ok with a rule being that it's not allowed to play pretend gun games at school. However, I'm not ok with society at large telling kids (typically it's boys) that it's not ok to play pretend gun games anywhere. Boys play that way. Boys have always played that way. Boys should be allowed to play that way. Girls too if they want to even though I think that's more of a rarity.

But if a kid pretends he has a gun in school, wouldn't it be a lot more reasonable to just tell the child, that it's not appropriate as oppose to suspension without any prior warning, as those articles describe, with a threat of permanent expulsion, if it happens again?

Can't a warning to start, suffice, before starting with suspension?

Yes, I agree with you. Kids should be taught the rules and procedures so they know in advance if they're breaking the rules by doing something.

I went around my primary school a while ago, reminiscing how it's changed. The "dangerous" wooden playscape where I broke my wrist, and where I used to spin on a tire swing until I was nearly sick, was gone. I was a student the year that the playground was built and I remember how exciting it was. Kids would push each other off and jump from the highest peaks onto hard ground like lemmings, but in a fun way. Teenagers would sit at the top smoking at night. It's where I learned what sex was, from a bit of graffiti written on the tunnel slide.

It's completely removed and replaced with some rubberised thing with primary colours and safety nets.

Likewise the gulley where I would play with caterpillars and hide from my classmates has been paved, presumably because it was near an open stream.

My childhood was much like yours ASPM. The only time my mother walked me to school was my first day. Once. I was never driven to school even when I had a broken arm and couldn't do up the zipper on my coat. My brother and I would play outside at night in the dark and sneak onto people's property to peek in their windows. We would wade through creeks and try to catch minnows with a net when I was as young as four. Sometimes I did this alone. I climbed around on junk machinery in my grandfather's workshop unsupervised, even with broken windows and sharp tools. My brother fell through the roof of my auntie's house onto the floor. He burned himself with lighter fluid trying to play Evil Knievel with a toy motorcycle jumping through fire.

Those were the good old days.

I wouldn't have wanted my parents anywhere near me in public. At home I spent all my time in a play fort and I wouldn't even let my parents go inside. I lived in there for eight years with my husband Elton John.

Sigh.

Just as long as they're not REAL weapons, it's fine. Kids can have fun just as long as they know about being safe.

Nobody did. Nobody wanted to be known as “Momma’s boy” or the “teachers pet”. People who had that reputation had a target on their back.

All my and most parents required on most days was to be home for dinner and make sure your homework is done.

The crime rates now are actually much lower then in the ‘60s and ‘70s then now.
The difference is now we have the epidemic of “spectacular” crimes such as mass shootings making it appear there is anarchy in the streets. And now every formally routine news item is “breaking news” ringing on our devices. “Breaking News” or “Bulletins” back then was reserved for something like the President being assassinated.