It has made people overly cautious, but in many ways the caution is well advised. Look at the rise in deaths from vehicles, driving under the influence, driving while distracted, the size of cars and how large/tall they are now. Even as an adult, you're likely to be met with animosity while riding your bike around, never mind a child. Increase of bicycle thefts, another reason. You can sort of see how a lot of these factors fuel each other, and put parents in a terrible position so that even if they weren't scared of the news cycle it doesn't logically make sense to willingly have their kids deal with such avoidable issues.

The weakening of communities has also made this much worse. Used to be you could play with the neighborhood just fine, if something happened one parent would tell the others or talk about it during a BBQ. Now, very little of that exists. There's so much animosity in communities. Leads to what this article is talking about, but things like NextDoor have made community building a sin. Everyone wants to be the snitch, the "community pillar" by becoming the epitome of a stereotypical no-fun-allowed police.

We've been living in apartments for ages now, yet we still struggle to make our neighbours that live 3 steps away, reliable friends. Everyone is just too busy, too distracted, too this or that. So I can't blame parents entirely for this dilemma we've created, we're all at fault at every level.