What does it say about a society when it begins to seriously debate the need to protect children and one side doesn’t even admit they need protection?
The dangers to children are clearer by the day and — thanks to years of progressive policies and threats of cancelation — are playing out in schools, corporate boardrooms, and via the internet. Many people, including this writer, were not prepared to face the fact that the issue is so heated.
But children are in danger. Children are in danger because they are told from an increasing number of sectors of society that they are confused and broken.
And it’s showing up in the data. Axios has reported that LGBTQ identity rates have risen in the present generation compared to previous generations. And it’s not just run-of-the-mill homosexuality.
Questions were put to the respondents if they identify as lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or something other than heterosexual — and could pick as many options as applied to them.
- Those who responded with another identity, like queer or pansexual, were recorded as “other LGBT” and were included in the estimate.
What’s particularly strange about this is that it seems clearly tied in with a political ideology, which suggests that it’s not — as many conservatives have been getting louder about vocalizing — wholly organic. The purveyors seem to be blissfully unaware of the damage they are causing. Because if they were aware of the damage they’re causing they pull back, right? Right??
WH’s @PressSec: GOP “legislators who are contemplating these discriminatory [trans] bills have been put on notice by the DoJ & HHS that laws & policies preventing care that health care professionals recommend for transgender minors may violate the Constitution & the federal law” pic.twitter.com/laQvdtXawN
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 7, 2022
While most are focusing on the disturbing rise of sexual identity discussions by teachers in schools targeting very young children — a trend Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is trying to address with his parental rights bill — there are other threats to America’s young people, notably the political agenda that forced young people away from their peers and into masks for two years.
At Bari Weiss’ Common Sense substack, Suzy Weiss tracks how young people did during the pandemic. It didn’t go well.
This didn’t start with Covid. “People are growing up more slowly,” said Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University and the author of the 2017 book “iGen.” Jonathan Haidt, the psychologist and author of “The Coddling of the American Mind,” traces the downward spiral to 2013 and the explosion of social media. That’s when the helicopter-parented 18-year-olds started to leave home with their iPhones and not much else.
Covid, however has dramatically increased these forces. Young people are less able to navigate the daily hiccups of everyday life when they have been hermetically sealed from bad relationships, bad breakups and awkward conversations.
The CDC said that, from 2019 to 2020, the incidence of girls ages 12 to 17 who were rushed to the Emergency Room after attempting suicide jumped by 51 percent. E.R. admissions for eating disorders doubled among the same group, according to the CDC, and tripled for tic-related disorders, which experts trace in part to TikTok. (In the exact same time frame, about 3 percent of the U.S. suicide rates dropped, and this is due to the fact that the population tends to be more male.
One young girl Weiss interviewed mentioned that she didn’t even have the energy to make TikTok videos, providing some insight into how popular that platform has become for young people.
Serena spoke to me recently. She’d spent the previous few days in bed watching “Euphoria” and “Shameless.” The week before, she’d tested positive for Covid for the second time. “Monday I had a brutal headache for about four hours,” Serena told me. At the bottom of the stairs, her mom had left vitamins, sandwiches and ibuprofen. “I didn’t have any energy to do my hair or make TikToks or anything.”
TikTok, in addition to its disturbing ties to the Chinese Communist Party, has also been playing pharmacy it seems to these same kids who might find themselves confused by the sheer panoply of sexual identies available — and pushed — on them.
You can add each mental illness to the [TikTok]The search bar hosts its own community of suffering people, who share their stories on the platform. Some seem very mentally ill. Other people aren’t. Many of the supposed sufferers self-diagnose with bipolar or borderline personality disorder—relatively rare and serious conditions.
Kyle Robertson was the co-founder and CEO of Cerebral, a mental-health startup. He provides direct-to-door prescriptions for psychiatric medications to customers. It also runs its own TikTok account, where it promotes “medication management for anxiety, depression, insomnia [and] more.” It has several paid “influencers” who post promotional spots on the site with the hashtag #cerebralpartner. It even brought on Olympic gymnast Simone Biles as a “chief impact officer.”
TikTok plugging in SSRIs is similar to selling OxyContin without a rehabilitation facility. You will be amazed at how it works.
The kids don’t have it all together. They have failed to accept progressive policies and their political agendas. They need conservatives to help them. Admitting that there is a problem is the first step. That’s where conservatives have the advantage.