People are more in touch with the world now. Kids on my street still play outside, and after dark, too. But I know my neighbors, and my neighborhood, and it is the exception, not the rule. Fifty years ago, we would only have learned of the Virginia Tech massacre on the radio, or the newspaper, maybe ther might have been a mention on the network news, but there wouldn't have been the 24-hour coverage there is today. Were children abducted back then? Yes, but with no "Amber Alert" system, the whole country didn't hear about it. Were people killed needlesly back then? Yes, but again, no 24-hour, examine-every-angle coverage.
My mother neither smoked nor drank during her pregnancies, and yet two of my siblings lived less than a day. My friend Sandy lost her eye because of playing on a golf course where she wasn't supposed to be. A neighbor kid was killed when his Big Wheel was hit by a car - no, he didn't have any helmet on. An older kid was brain-damaged for life when he was riding his bike through traffic - no helmet - and got hit by a car. My friend's brother was killed when his mother's car hit a light pole on a slick street - no airbags back then. He was in a coma for two awful weeks before he died.
Want more examples of why the good old days weren't necessarily all that great?
Anyone can look at selected bit of any period of time and conclude it was great, or terrible.
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