During his guesting on ABC's "The View," the host of "Dr. Phil" explained the harm smartphones and social media had wrought on childhood development ever since they gained ground in 2008 and 2009.
He explained: "Kids stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives. And so we saw the biggest spike and the highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicidality since records have been kept – and it just continues on and on and on.
"Then COVID-19 hits 10 years later, and the same agencies that knew that are the agencies that shut down the schools for two years. Who does that? Who takes away the support system for these children?
"And by the way – when they shut it down, they stopped the mandated reporters from being able to see the children that were being abused and sexually molested. In fact, [the authorities] sent them home and abandoned [the children] to their abusers with no way to watch. Referrals dropped 50 to 60 percent." (Related: Political analyst: People HAVE HAD ENOUGH of COVID-19 restrictions.)
While McGraw's initial remarks were palatable to the five hosts, they bristled when he used the same logic against the COVID-19 lockdowns. Co-host and actress Whoopi Goldberg of "Sister Act" fame claimed that the authorities "were trying to save kids' lives."
McGraw responded by pointing out that school children were almost completely unaffected by COVID-19. One of the hosts then asked the "Dr. Phil" host: "Are you saying no school children died of COVID?"
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"I'm saying it was the safest group," McGraw explained. "They were the less vulnerable group and they suffered and will suffer more from the mismanagement of COVID-19 than they will from the exposure to COVID-19. That's not an opinion, that's a fact."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 1,696 children in the U.S. died from causes "involving COVID-19" from 2020 through September 2023. Thus, McGraw's sentiments about the COVID-19 lockdowns make sense.
"Dr. Phil is completely correct in that COVID-19 affected children far less severely than adults, something that Goldberg incorrectly claims is thanks to lockdowns but was due to their superior immune response," Modernity News pointed out. "Multiple major studies confirmed that pandemic lockdowns had devastating effects on children, harming their emotional development, social skills and driving mass clinical depression."
Several commentators on social media posted their two cents on the matter. "Dr. Phil leaves hosts on 'The View' in stunned silence after utterly schooling them on lockdowns," wrote Newsmax's Benny Johnson. Mike Cernovich meanwhile commented: "Audience clapping at the end triggered those wicked witches."
Back in 2021, USA Today reported that McGraw had observed a "modern topic of conflict" in his program – the issue of COVID-19 vaccines. The author and TV host described this as a form of "political football."
"I've been so frustrated by the fact that we have politicized health care," he said. "We've politicized something like the [COVID-19] vaccine. We didn't do this when I was growing up with the polio vaccine and the smallpox vaccine."
Visit Pandemic.news for more stories about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Watch Dr. Phil denounce the state of parental rights in Canada during an appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast below.
This video is from the High Hopes channel on Brighteon.com.
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