You make a lot of good points.

I feel like emotional anemia and an overabundance of choices might be related. When everything is considered optional, nothing is considered vital.

What I'm really talking about isn't actually reducing choices. I think people essentially need to have more default options or a stronger shared sense of what options are better. That doesn't mean they can't do something else, though. Rather, it means that when they deviate from cultural expectations it's because they know it's what they want.