I asked my boomer mother about whether she'd have liked to have had a gps on me when I was a kid in the 80s. She said she would have loved it. she worked until 5 and there was no "after school care" in our small town... she kept our pantry full of chips and soda and our video games new so that we'd be home when she got home, rather than out somewhere else with our friends.
To her, the lack of near constant panic attacks would be a godsend, and she wouldn't have felt so bad about using video games as childcare.
As a parent, my concern isn't about my kid being abducted... an air tag in their pocket would be more discreet. It's about letting them explore with a safety net. Go for longer bike rides, knowing that if it gets too dark, I can pick them up... that's not risk averse.
The level of risk for every generation has been dramatically lower since the 1920s. Both of my parents lost an older sibling... loss happened at the family level in the 50s. in the 80s, I maybe had one or two kids in my class that had experienced loss... a tractor accident or gun accident... but now there's been one child that died in the past three years at my son's school.
Risk had bigger consequences 60 years ago. Our kids are better off for it.