And what if you fell while you where alone and broke a leg making it impossible for you to walk? Or you friend fell and hit his head open on the road being able to call for help is actually pretty handy.

Like it might sound absurd, but shit happens

That paranoia came about when crime documentaries got big on TV (and now internet) rather than a consistent increase in abductions. People are really bad at reasoning with probability and undoing attentional bias from media, so they even think it can be likely kids would be abducted if left alone.

This is why 24/7 location tracking on kid's phones is completely normalized. Sure, it's not a bad thing to take precautions, but tracking your kids like a dog seems a bit much. And I'm sure a lot of parents misuse it for a lot less serious things (eg teens being at the mall unsupervised).