When I was a lad, I would be out after school every evening playing football and all over the weekend and played my computer games in the evening.
20 years later, I have a 12 year old brother in law who hardly ventures out of his house, or is even allowed to, so sit in front of the tv from when he gets in from school to when he goes to bed.
It was never an issue when I was a kid as my parents weren't visibly worried about me getting hurt/kidnapped/raped/fiddled with but parents will hardly let them out of their sight now, understandably so.
For me, it has nothing to do with the amount of foreigners in the league, as Ian Sea said, as long as they are good enough for us, I couldn't give a shit where they are from. If an English kid is good enough and has the attitide that he is willing to put in the effort to turn his promising talent into a genuine skill, then he will make it, but loads of kids today are lazy.
I like the idea of kids not using full size pitches as it seems to make a great deal of sense to me.