Before the 80s it was disco and drugs in the 70s ruining the youth, the hippies in the 60s, communists before that. It's been going on longer.
The first video game panic was in the 70s. A game called Death Race where you ran “gremlins” over with your car. People thought the gremlins looked too human and it’d lead to people running over pedestrians on their way home from the bar.