Trust suffers in a world on permanent alert. But it's not the only thing we lose, writes Laura D'Olimpio.

Trust is vital for individuals to flourish.

A trusting society allows people to feel safe, work together, communicate with one other and engage with those who are different to themselves without feeling fearful.

But the news isn't good. Some recent research shows that fewer and fewer people think that others can be trusted, and the youngest cohorts of people are less likely to believe that people are honest.

Analysis of time series data indicates that in the 1960s in the USA, 55 per cent thought you could trust others, yet by 1999 that figure had dropped to 34 per cent.

In Australia social trust fell by 8 per cent between 1981 and 1997, and in Britain social trust fell from 56 per cent in 1959 to 44 per cent in 1990 to 30 per cent by 1996.

In the US only 25 per cent of young people believe that others are honest, compared to 34 per cent of adults.

We need to ask how we can raise children to be trusting and trusted citizens.

How can we nurture trust?

Parents shape a child's attitude when they give their children messages that it is a dangerous world outside and strangers are not to be trusted.

We can see the importance of teaching children to be wary given their vulnerability, but it is also true that most strangers will not cause a child any harm, and, in fact, are likely to be helpful if a child hurts themselves or needs assistance.

Political scientist Robert Putnam speaks about how children are socialised to trust (or not) through technological means such as media and television.

When seeing and hearing scary news reports about extreme incidents that have occurred, parents may feel justified in alleviating their anxieties about their children's welfare by warning them about potential dangers. However, these narratives are then imparted to the children who worry when they are out in the world.

An analysis of the crimes against children reported in the news demonstrated that there has been a dramatic increase in the coverage of child-related crimes since 1980, yet there is no evidence that crime against children has actually increased.

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This increase in reporting such crimes correlates with the same time span that sees generalised trust diminish.

We do seem to have some innate capacity for trusting and meeting trust.

In formative years, trust should be nurtured so that children develop into trusting and trustworthy citizens.

Cultural expectations of trust can differ, and certainly there are varying climates of trust that are influenced by history and social context.

Certainly trust needs to be warranted and if you have reason to distrust, this should be heeded. Yet we need to trust others if we are to cohabit and live in communities.

Generalised trust allows individuals to connect with and support others.

Fear can damage trust and such fear can be engendered through the example set by role models, or through media reports and televised news programs.

We're alert and alarmed

One effect of fear, as we may call it, is that we may feel uneasy in society and feel as though we are less able to trust others, particularly others who we judge to be different from ourselves.

A reduction in generalised trust can result in diminishing feelings of well-being. Generalised trust is an important ingredient for social and political life.

In the political sphere, generalised trust allows citizens to work collaboratively in social and political groups and in the social sphere, generalised trust supports people working and playing together across national boundaries and accommodates cultural diversity; it fosters acts of tolerance, and promotes acceptance of others.

In the introduction to Spooked: The Truth about Intelligence in Australia, political scientist Daniel Baldino writes:

Media explanations of tragic events tend towards state-of-emergency speculations that highlight the many potential pathways to death, decay and harm. Thugs, misfits and criminals are elevated into insane holy warriors with a supervillain status, who pose an existential threat.

Baldino argues that historically we are not living in a time of peak terrorist attacks, even though it might feel that way. So if the hard evidence doesn't bear this out, why are we so scared?

If there are not actually a higher number of terrorist attacks than there have been historically, and if we are not more at risk, then why are we seemingly so scared of terrorism and threats against our personal and national security? Is this fear reinforced by media messages: keep alert and alarmed"?

We live in a 24-hour news cycle where there is a constant demand for stories on tap and an accompanying audience to listen to every thought and opinion, particularly tragic tales or fear inducing reports.

However, I'm not convinced that the world really is such a scary place.

Is our media partly to blame for increased anxiety around issues of personal and national security and our willingness to accept increasing intrusions into our privacy in an effort to keep us safe from harm?

Social contract in an age of terror

Fear and threats to our safety can undermine the social contract, which relies upon trustworthy citizens and feelings of generalised trust to remain intact.

Social contract theory is the view that our moral and political obligations are dependent upon an agreement that is implicit or explicit in the society we form.

The idea of the social contract theory is best linked to modern moral and political theory, defended by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and John Rawls.

The premise asks us to consider the rules we want in society to ensure it is fair and just. Imagine if you do not know who you will be in such a society.

A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria waves an ISIS flag in Raqqa in Syria on June 29, 2014. ( Reuters )

Rawls' test of the veil of ignorance requires us to consider that we may be a man, woman, able-bodied or not, intelligent or beautiful, perhaps, sporty or any of the opposites to these.

What rules would be fair to all, regardless of which position we ended up occupying?

The criticism of Rawls' veil of ignorance is that it is impossible to be objectively detached from one's beliefs, values and experiences in the world.

Race, gender and class run the risk of being trivialised or omitted from this picture as the social contract is unlikely to be perfectly implemented in practice.

Thus unless you consider real people in a context, your perfect contract will only be a pure form that fails in its application to the real world. However, the social contract exists, even if we forget it is in place.

Can we prevent threats?

It is the social contract that provides us with protection and a feeling of security that allows us to trust our rights and liberties will be upheld.

This is often in exchange for us giving up some of our freedom. So, the intrusion into our privacy may be defended if it is claimed that this intrusion is for our own safety.

Yet it is important to analyse the work such intrusion does and whether or not it really will prevent something bad from happening.

Certainly the media with its 24-hour news cycle can activate our alarm bells.

But if such disasters were to actually come to pass, would our worrying about them actually help at all?

Worry is a very human existential by-product of a fear of loss and a fear of mortality.

As creatures of habit, we want to protect what is familiar — to guard against unpredictable threats that could alter the way we live and prevent us doing what we want to do.

Therefore, such fears are bound up in our sense of identity, how we think about ourselves and our ideas about liberty and the meaning we make in our lives.

Yet, the very freedom of living our lives in a sense of peace and security is itself tied into our feelings of trust for one another.

Learning to trust in a background of alarm is difficult, but it's non-negotiable if the social contract is to remain intact.

Dr Laura D'Olimpio is senior lecturer in philosophy at The University of Notre Dame Australia.