Use of the phrase "no worries" shows a worrisome increase

The phrase, “no worries” is nothing new, but it does seem to me to be something newly prevalent. It has its origins in 1960s Australia as a general expression of Australia’s famously relaxed and casual disposition. It so captured the Australian spirit, it was even adapted as Australia’s national slogan for the year 1978. 

Australian surfer culture embraced it, and one theory is that wave riders from the US who had traveled to experience the Antipodean angle brought it back with them. Early documented instances of American use of the phrase in newspapers and magazines begins to percolate in the 1980s, mostly in California, but then in 1986, Crocodile Dundee blew it wide open in the US with his signature phrase, “No worries, mate.” 

Usage shoots upward from that point, and then with Hakuna Matata in 1994, any hopes it would magically disappear were destroyed, probably forever. The children of the Lion King era are now butchers and bakers, doctors and lawyers, cops and clergy. They’re everywhere you look, and any one of them is likely to say to you at the end of an otherwise pleasant encounter, “No worries.”

I got one with a bagel this morning as a substitute for, “You’re welcome” after I thanked the young man for my change. He was about 18 years old. This leads me to believe that the children of the children of the Lion King generation are learning it at home. 

In my opinion, words that express degrees of either agony or ecstasy should fairly match the experience they describe. Particularly ironic hyperbole is of course fine. If pulling up to free time on a parking meter is awesome or amazing, what next level do you have to describe the birth of your daughter? 

So it is with "no worries," and for that reason, it's a miss for me in this usage. I didn’t expect any worries in receiving either the bagel or the change, and wouldn’t have even thought any possible in so mundane a transaction until he got me thinking about it. His use of “no worries” here was fungible with “de nada,” “my pleasure,” “certainly,” “anytime,” or any number of similarly appreciative phrases. I shoved two dollars into his tip jar and he said, “Thank you.” 

I said, “No worries.”