I don't know if the world is any scarier, but we certainly do have much more access to "news", and nearly instantly so, at that. I think one of the reasons some of us tend to become withdrawn or distant is that there's just too darn much "noise" out there - too many people, too much traffic, too much loud music, etc, etc. The other thing all of the "too much" does is to desensitize us. We see a tremendous amount of violence in the media, whether fictional or "news", and sort of come to expect it. Perhaps that's what's really scarey about the world we live in now!