[lm28469]

We need to go deeper though. The decrease in perceived safety is, at least in part, due to 24/7 news reporting about violence, crime, terrorism, hate and generally negative topics. Which itself is due to progress in information technology and in the way we make money out of it. There is literally no benefit for the general public in this.

Don't get me wrong, you have all the reasons to fear these things if you live where these things happen, but I'd bet my left hand that most people in 1st world countries ever witness any kind of serious violence.

[moorhosj]

The book Fortress America [1] posits that, in America at least, it has been a long shifting of the fear from red to black. Basically, after USSR was defeated, we shifted more vigorously into a "law and order" society. Politicians and the media played up the threat (even though all data was showing a safer society) of gangs and "thugs".

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Fortress-America-Embraced-Abandoned-D...