People often wish to “go back to a better time”, or reminisce about their childhood when “the world was a safer place”. It may have felt that way, but it’s almost entirely untrue.
That’s not to say that things can’t be better — the world today is still a mess, but it’s the safest and healthiest that it’s ever been. I’ll be pulling some quotes from Hans Rosling’s book “Factfulness“, and this one is a great place to start:
“Remember: things can be bad, and getting better.”
You can point to many bad things in the world today, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but most “bad things” are wildly better today than any time in history.
Murder rates in the US have crept up lately to roughly 15 deaths per 100,000 residents in the last few years, but that’s still just half the rate it was in the 90’s (such as 28 per 100,000 in 1993).
Reports of missing children are down 40 percent since 1997.
Across the world, poverty rates are at all time-lows, more people are educated and vaccinated than any time before, and all is trending in the right direction.
Even school shootings are down from where they were in the 90’s. From 1993-2000, there were 276 children killed in schools. In the past eight years (2015-2022), it’s been around 210. If you factor in the much greater population of students these days, the numbers are even more skewed. Certainly any number greater than zero is entirely unacceptable, and I’m in favor of making changes to our gun laws, but this also isn’t a new thing.
I’m sure you’ve seen memes like this, which sound great but are factually very inaccurate.
“The News”
Ultimately, this comes back to natural human fears, combined with the clickbait stories that so many news organizations push. Here are two more quotes from Rosling’s book to help frame this:
“here’s the paradox: the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe.”
“When things are getting better we often don’t hear about them. This gives us a systematically too-negative impression of the world around us, which is very stressful.”
And this isn’t just a feeling that a few people have. He’s run studies on this, interviewing many people, with the conclusion that you might expect:
“Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless—in short, more dramatic—than it really is.”
Your kids are safer than you ever were
We hear the same when talking about our kids. “When I was their age, I played outside and didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped, but it’s just not safe today“. The truth is, it’s much more safe today.
In his book “How to Live Dangerously“, author Warwick Cairns did the math on child abductions. Here’s a stunning quote from the book:
If for some strange reason you WANTED your child to be kidnapped by a stranger, how long would you have to keep them outside, unattended, for this to be statistically likely to happen? 750,000 years.
As a parent, I’m not suggesting you just let your kids run free, and I am still very cautious with my children. Bad things certainly happen, and none of us want to see anything like that happen to our kids. I get it. Taking precautions and being safe is always a good idea.
At the end of the day, though, there are two things you can do:
- Be thankful to be living in 2022 and not in 1993 or 1957 or 1800. We’re all better in virtually every aspect of life compared to any time in the past. The media is going to promote every horrible story they can find to help get viewers. Those stories are generally true, and indeed awful, but way less frequent than you’re led to believe.
- We’re nowhere near finished. There are still millions in poverty, there are thousands of murders every year, and there is a lot of work to be done. Dig and help fight the good to fight to make things even better for our kids.
Be happy at where we are, but never be satisfied with our progress.
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