In 2015, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv let their 10 and six-year-old children walk home alone from a park in Silver Springs, Maryland.
Halfway through their trip, the kids were stopped by police and within days, the parents were under investigation for neglect.
Mr and Mrs Meitiv were blasted across social media for letting children roam free in a dangerous world, subject to kidnapping or worse.
Their case highlights how much our culture has been warped by the idea of ‘stranger danger’ – a decades-old concept that any unknown person is a threat.
When we teach kids that the world is awful, they believe us, even when it’s not accurate or healthy.
Studies have found that the odds of a child being kidnapped by a stranger is far less than one percent
Every kidnapping is a tragedy. But most fears of strangers are misplaced: the actual risk of a child being abducted and killed by an unknown person is estimated to be 0.00007 percent.
By comparison, your odds of being struck by lightning are about 0.0065 percent – so you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than to be kidnapped by a stranger as a child.
As a parent to two daughters myself, I understand these urges.
But as a Stanford University psychologist seeing an epidemic of young adults struggling with depression and anxiety, I believe that stranger danger mania may be hurting younger generations more than helping them.
Thirty-five years before the Meitivs’ troubles, in 1981, Revé Walsh brought her six-year-old son Adam to a Sears department store in Hollywood, Florida.
He waited by an Atari video game display while she shopped for lamps.
When she returned minutes later, Adam was gone. Within two weeks, Revé would learn Adam had been kidnapped and murdered.
Mrs Walsh lived every parent’s nightmare, and soon that terror became an American fascination.
Revé’s husband, John—who would later host America’s Most Wanted—testified to Congress that the country was “littered with… strangled children,” claiming that 50,000 kids were taken by strangers each year.
Coverage of abductions shot up dramatically during the 1980s. I grew up during this period and remember eating cereal while gazing at images of kidnapped children on milk cartons.
By 1987, almost half of American kids thought they were ‘very likely’ to go missing.
Violent crime has dropped enormously since then, and yet a 2024 survey found more than a quarter of American parents remain ‘extremely worried’ their child will be abducted.
In the 1960s, young people trusted others more than older adults. But after years of stranger danger, the trend reversed, making Gen Z the least trusting generation on record.
Young adults have also been ravaged by surging loneliness, depression, and anxiety – and I think it’s possible that the distrust we’ve built into them could be a factor in it.
Dr Jamil Zaki is a Stanford University psychologist and author
University of Pennsylvania psychologists found in a 2021 study that parents believe that to succeed, their kids must think of the world as dangerous and competitive.
This leaks into our behavior in at least two ways.
The first is what Jonathan Haidt, an influential New York University social psychologist, calls safetyism, or doing anything to prevent our kids from harm.
Safetyism is physical—not allowing kids to climb trees or race bikes—but it’s also social.
More than ever before, kids are prevented from spending time in community settings, like parks and public pools, without their parents.
A 2022 study found that 94 percent of news stories about children’s independence painted that independence in a negative light. Other research found that people tend to judge parents who give their kids freedom as bad parents.
Through safetyism, we send a strong signal that people we don’t know are not to be trusted.
The second is parents’ stepping in to solve children’s social problems. As a parent, I too wither when my kids are suffering, and if I had a button that would brighten their mood, I’d press it repeatedly.
But stepping in – especially when your kid is dealing with issues with their peers, can backfire.
As child psychiatrist Meghan Walls put it, ‘by solving our children’s problems for them, we interfere with our children’s ability to develop the effective coping mechanisms needed to deal with these challenges.’
I would add that our meddling also teaches children that other kids are menaces.
Safetyism and intervention are usually well-intentioned, but they are also exactly backwards.
Scientists have studied how life turns out for kids who are raised with a more trusting, open view of the world versus kids who are raised to be shut off.
They found that people who saw the world as safe were happier, more fulfilled, and more successful than their warier counterparts.
Cynics suffered from greater mental and physical illness, and even died younger than their more trusting counterparts.
John Walsh, the host of America’s Most Wanted, tragically lost his son Adam to a kidnapping and murder in 1981
In other words, by shielding our kids from short term, fictional dangers, we’re steering them into more long term, real risk- of losing out on love, friendship, and community.
Rather than driving our kids into fear and isolation, we can help open them to the world.
Two strategies can help here. First, we can point children to ‘stranger goodness’.
Media portrays the world as terrifying. As a result, research has found that the more people tune in, the more they think crime is rampant, even when it’s decreasing.
Real people are much more trustworthy, generous, friendly, and open minded than we realize. The average person underestimates the average stranger, and science proves it.
But we can look more closely, and so can our children. With my own kids, I try a practice called social savoring.
My daughters and I regularly trade stories of kindness we’ve seen throughout the day. This helps them notice the helpers around us, who are everywhere.
Second, we can let children tackle their own problems and manage their own relationships.
My brilliant, late friend, neuroscientist Emile Bruneau described this parenting style as under-bearing attentiveness. This includes being present and available for young people, but not stepping in to help until they ask, and even then asking them for ideas instead of offering them.
Research bears out his thinking. When parents gave children social independence in older studies, they experienced less stress at school and greater faith and positive feelings towards their peers.
We can get our kids into this healthier mindset. To help our kids thrive, we can tell help them see the good all around them. To help them have faith in others, we can start by putting more faith in them.
Jamil Zaki is a professor of Psychology at Stanford University and author Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.
