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On the January 10, 2026 episode of Fox News Saturday Night, host Jimmy Failla was joined by Tom Shillue and comedian Aaron Berg for a plainspoken discussion about how social media is wrecking childhood and parenting. Shillue didn’t mince words, warning that constant online exposure is warping kids’ minds by the time they reach their teenage years. The panel pushed back against the fantasy that endless feeds and influencer culture are harmless, arguing instead that social media amplifies narcissism, envy, and emotional fragility in a generation that used to learn resilience at the kitchen table.
It’s no surprise conservative voices are getting louder on this issue; we see too many parents eager for clout who trade real fathering for viral moments. When dads prioritize followers over discipline, kids lose the steady moral compass that built this country, and the results are predictable: entitlement, instability, and a hunger for validation from strangers. Those social-media teatime applause lines may score likes, but they don’t teach hard work, responsibility, or respect for authority—values that used to hold communities together. Opinion without backbone is no substitute for parenting, and the segment exposed that truth for millions of viewers.
The fear these hosts expressed isn’t just talk-show bluster; hard research shows high screen and social-media use is linked to worsening mental health in teens. Recent national data finds teens with four or more hours of non-school screen time are far more likely to report depression and anxiety symptoms, poorer sleep, and less social support than their peers who spend less time glued to devices. Systematic reviews have also found consistent associations between excessive screen exposure, especially social media, and declines in adolescent mental well-being, particularly among girls. Those are real harms affecting real children, and they warrant blunt public discussion rather than liberal hand-wringing.
Other studies paint an even darker picture, linking excessive device use to higher rates of suicidal ideation and severe mental-health outcomes among high-school students. This is not an abstract cultural gripe; it is an urgent public-health problem that big tech has an interest in obscuring because addictive algorithms drive their profits. Conservatives should be uncompromising here: protecting children from engineered addiction is not censorship, it is parental defense of the next generation and common-sense government oversight where necessary.
The solution starts at home. Parents must stop outsourcing their authority to phones and apps, set strict limits, and reclaim family rituals—dinner, chores, shared responsibilities—that build character. At the same time, lawmakers and state officials should stop worshipping Silicon Valley and begin demanding transparency, enforceable age verification, and tools that genuinely empower parents rather than empower algorithms. If conservatives don’t lead on restoring childhood, the left’s cultural managers will fill the vacuum with more performative parenting and fewer practical results.
This Fox segment was a necessary shot across the bow, reminding hardworking Americans that our children are worth protecting from a soulless attention economy. We should listen to voices like Shillue’s, not to elites who profit from broken families and traumatized teens. It’s time to choose reality over rhetoric, family over followers, and to fight for a country where kids grow up resilient, useful, and proud to be part of something bigger than themselves.
