I have found the turning away from football by the young has less to do with injuries, than the inherent daddy balling on the youth level. What usually happens on the youth level is that the head and assistant coaches kids get to play QB, RB, and WR while the rest of the kids get to block or not play at all. It is cronyism at its finest.
To add, a common path to the gridiron is to play soccer as a youth to build athletic ability and then step onto the gridiron in HS. Youth football does absolutely nothing in preparing a player for the higher levels. The coaching makes LL baseball coaches look like Tony LaRussa, and that is a low bar to say the least. It is populated by daddyballers and lunatics for the most part.
Interesting. When my son was growing up in Kansas all boys either played tackle football beginning at age 9 or were labeled as “butterfly collectors”. His father was a coach and neither he nor any of his asst coaches would ever try to play. Much has apparently changed over the years.