Does more information help or hurt society?
When I talk to grandparents, I hear stories of their childhood climbing trees, going on adventures, visiting neighbors miles away. Their childhood was completely different than mine which is even more different then kids today. The biggest difference in there lives - No Television.
When TV first appeared, we as a society got more connected. We could share information faster and find out more about the world. At the same time, people seemed to become more paranoid - faster. Much faster than usual. Parents started to tell there kids to avoid strangers because of a kidnapping which happened four states away. The fun stuff like climbing trees started to become outlawed and kids slowly stopped playing outside.
Prime example of this change - Ringhaver Park
Today, the 21st century. The internet. The fastest way to communicate with one another. When I go outside a typical suburban neighborhood, the streets are abandoned. When they are outside, a parent is watching them 24/7. The adventures the grandparents had, impossible today. When I talk to parents it's always about child safety and the dangers of those evil criminals lurking about. However, when I look at statistics, crime is much lower compared to the time of my grandparents and kids are much safer.
Today we have access to more information, faster information. I can usually fact check something in 30 seconds or less to tell it's a threat. But for some reason, I find people more scared. I keep getting emails forwarded to me about threats which has a one in a billion chances of happening or fake hoaxes. I want to say the sender doesn't believe them but they do.
The exception being, paradoxically, the internet. That is usually due to naive technophobic parents. If news truly reported what was going on out here, I'm sure the average parent would pull the plug.
Twenty years from now, information will travel even faster. Mobile devices will be traceable allow anyone to know where anything and anyone is at any time. What is going to happen with our society then? Will we be more paranoid or will we be more rational and logical?
For those who remembered the old Ringhaver Park, here it is today: http://www.coj.net/Departments/Recreation+and+Community+Services/Recreation+and+Community+Programming/Recreation+Activities/Permits/Ringhaver+Park.htm
I don't necessarily think it is about information in general, but information without context.
If all we see are endless 30 second sound bites about children being raped and kidnapped, one after another, then yes. But in the context of, as you mentioned, the lowest crime rate in the last 50 years, there is really less to fear.
I might also posit that that with greater access to information, the world has gotten smaller. As such, a child abduction in Massachusetts impacts us more now emotionally than it did 20 or 30 years ago.