adminA grieving mother on Fox News’ America Reports laid bare the human cost of Big Tech’s negligence when Deb Schmill described how her daughter connected with a drug dealer online and died of fentanyl poisoning, and she bluntly told Mark Zuckerberg it’s “time to face the music.” This is not a private tragedy alone; it is a public warning that our children are being preyed upon through platforms run by executives who promise safety but deliver surveillance and addiction.
The fentanyl scourge is no abstraction — synthetic opioids remain the leading killer among drug overdoses in the United States, driving tens of thousands of deaths and tearing families apart every year. Government data show synthetic opioids continue to account for the majority of opioid-related fatalities, underscoring that this crisis is both deadly and persistent.
Make no mistake: criminals use the internet and fake online pharmacies to peddle deadly counterfeit pills, and social platforms create the highways that traffickers exploit to target teens and vulnerable young people. When federal investigators uncover transnational counterfeit operations moving fentanyl-laced pills across state lines, it isn’t a mysterious inevitability — it’s a market failure enabled by tech platforms that profit from scale and content engagement.
Conservatives should be ruthless in holding these companies accountable: call for hearings, roll back liability shields where platforms operate as distributors of harm, and enforce real parental-control standards that put families first, not shareholders. Deb Schmill’s plea should fuel a national demand for responsibility from the boardrooms of Meta and every CEO who treats children as collateral in the pursuit of engagement.
This is about protecting American families and restoring common-sense accountability. Hardworking parents deserve better than platitudes from tech billionaires; they deserve laws and enforcement that protect children, defend parental authority, and punish companies that put profit over human life. Now is the time for conservatives, lawmakers, and citizens to unite and make sure grief like Deb’s never becomes the price of doing business in Silicon Valley.
