When we were very young

When I was eight, I played outside. I rode my bike to the seven eleven, where I bought comics and slushees. My friends and I built underground forts in a vacant lot*, yet somehow I didn't once get murdered by a stranger. So this struck a chord.

Some days, we’d go exploring in the woods. Our minds full of fantastical stories of bad guys chasing us, we decided we must build a tree house. So we gathered up scrap pieces of old wood, rusty nails pulled out of rotting pieces of equipment, and a hammer someone nicked from their father’s toolbox. Then we’d nail this crap to a tree.
[. . .]
And we survived.
Hell, we didn’t just survive. We flourished.

The world is no more dangerous than it was thirty years ago. The parents bubble wrapping their kids today spent their own childhood playing with discarded building materials and eating bugs. So what gives?

*Pits covered with cardboard, technically, but who's counting?