Ngahanayem is mostly correct about the stats, and the media. Violence is MUCH less now than in the Reagan years, for example.
In 2019, there were six deaths by homicide per 100,000 of the population in the United States, compared to 5.9 deaths by homicide in the previous year.
www.statista.com
50 years ago everyone got their news from the local paper, and local news was the front page. If you lived in LA then a murder in Chicago was not news unless it was exceptional. But now news is national, and both network and internet will feed you endless repeats of crimes from everywhere in the USA. So while crime in the 1980s, per capita, was 50% above today, your awareness of it is probably 10x exagerated compared to then. Which explains why you lock your doors now, while the similar violence rates in the 60s did not scare us so much.