During a heated debate on ABC’s “The View,” renowned psychologist and television personality Dr. Phil McGraw criticized the show’s co-hosts for their views on the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on children.
Dr. McGraw argued that the mental health crisis among young people started escalating with the introduction of smartphones and social media around 2008, and the pandemic lockdowns only exacerbated the situation.
He stated, “In like ’08, ’09, smartphones came in and kids stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives.” As per Dr. McGraw, this shift led to record-high levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidality among children, a trend that has persisted over the years.
????This is INSANE:
Dr. Phil correctly pointed out how school closures severely hurt children’s mental health, and the ladies of The View are *still* defending the decision to close schools four years later, despite all of the public evidence showing how harmful and unnecessary… pic.twitter.com/6YihTl5eH7
— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) February 26, 2024
The conversation became even more intense when Dr. McGraw addressed the decision to close schools for two years during the pandemic. He questioned the rationale behind taking away the support system for children and accused agencies of indirectly contributing to child abuse by shutting down mandated reporter access.
According to Dr. McGraw, the referrals for child abuse cases dropped 50-60% due to the lockdowns. He argued, “Who takes away the support system for these children? Who takes it away and shuts it down? By the way, when they shut it up they stopped the mandated reporters from being able to see children that were being abused and sexually molested and, in fact, sent them home and abandoned them to their abusers with no way to watch.”
These comments sparked a sharp response from co-host Sunny Hostin, who defended the lockdowns as a necessary measure to protect lives during the pandemic. This sentiment was echoed by Whoopi Goldberg, who stressed the government’s intention of saving children’s lives.
However, Dr. McGraw countered these arguments by emphasizing that school-aged children were not the most affected group in terms of COVID-19 fatalities. He stated, “They were the less vulnerable group, and they suffered and will suffer more from the mismanagement of COVID than they will from the exposure to COVID, and that’s not an opinion, that’s a fact.”
In conclusion, Dr. Phil McGraw’s appearance on “The View” sparked a heated debate on the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on children’s mental health. While the co-hosts defended the lockdowns as a life-saving measure, Dr. McGraw argued that the lockdowns and school closures have had a more significant negative impact on children’s mental health than the virus itself.
