In the 1940s and ’50s, kids fell in love with a new technology, and adults freaked out. A psychiatric researcher warned that this latest pastime was “a distinct influencing factor in the case of every single delinquent or disturbed child” he had studied. In 1948, Time magazine said that it would “not only inspire evil but suggest a form for the evil to take.” As David Hajdu relates in his insightful history of the era, “The Ten-Cent Plague,” states and cities introduced more than a hundred laws to ban or limit its sale. Congress held televised hearings to denounce it.

Which is all to say, the country panicked — because of the comic book. Sixty-odd years on, of course, this seems hysterical. And yet substitute “Internet,” “video game” or “texting,” and the sky seems to be falling again. We have visions of children becoming victims of lurking adult predators or teenagers themselves sending compromising sexual photos that go viral. We worry about the use of social-networking sites to humiliate vulnerable classmates or start fights that can turn physical. These are legitimate concerns. Online seductions of children are rare but devastating. Some children are hurt by sexting and cyberbullying.

And yet the overall rates of child sex crimes and of teen sex are down since the 1990s, as are juvenile crime, school violence and teen fighting. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, calls this distance between anxiety and reality “juvenoia” and chalks it up to an “exaggerated fear about the influence of social change on children.” Parents and lawmakers are, in short, so worried about protecting our children that they can fail to distinguish between real threats and phantom ones. That can lead to quick fixes that send the government, with all its law-enforcement power, in the wrong direction.

California, for example, decided to play the role of protector by banning the sale of violent video games to kids under age 18. The state says that the ban was passed to help prevent “violent, aggressive and antisocial behavior” among children. But even though the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association see a link between the games and aggression, others in the field disagree, viewing the games simply as a vehicle for fantasy. The video-game makers argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that no court had found firm evidence that gaming causes violence. As the court pointed out in its ruling in favor of the game makers, the state’s leading expert concluded his analysis with the admission that there is a “glaring empirical gap” in the research. It’s possible that over time, children who blast on-screen avatars are more likely to punch their classmates. But we don’t really know. The case ended up in front of the Supreme Court, and a decision is expected this month.