Senators play politics with cyberbullying blaming social media and schools but not parents

Senators bully social media CEOs to score political points with grieving parents who have lost children to cyberbullying. The first responsibility starts with the parents.

- The US Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings blaming Social Media companies like Meta (Facebook), Tiktok, X (Twitter), SnapChat and others like schools for the growing problem of cyberbullying and suicides of young children. But they won't say what needs to be said, that the first line of responsibility is with the parents who fail to closely monitor their children.

- Instead of leading on cyberbullying, politicians are pandering to voters and are afraid to do and say what needs to be said and done. Parents need to take responsibility for their children and stop blaming everyone else and the politicians should be making that argument.

- Politicians are trending towards reducing the involvement of parents in the lives of their school children, especially in school where administrators are deciding issues for children on secual orientation, transgender issues, and even abortion Those are issues parents should have sole influence on.

By Ray Hanania

PAID/Friday Feb 2, 2024

A bipartisan panel of Democrat and Republicans members of the U.S. Senate held a public hearing on Wednesday Jan. 31, 2024 in which they accused the owners of social media platforms not doing enough to prevent cyberbullying of children.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee found common ground to identify cyberbullying as a growing problem and proceeded to bully the owners of Facebook, X (Twitter), Tiktok, SnapChat and other social media platforms.

The hearing was chaired by U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, a liberal Democrat from Illinois, and among the audience were parents of young teens who committed suicide including a family from Illinois whose 15-year-old son committed suicide on Jan. 13, 2022.

Among those forced to sit through the committees own political bullying were META (Facebook) owner Mark , X (Twitter) CEO Linda Yaccarino, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and Discord CEO Jason Citron.

Committee members including Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, South and powerful Carolina Republican Sen. ​​Lindsey Graham were all respectful to the families who lost children who were invited to attend the hearing.

But they were disrespectful and bullying to the owners of the social media companies, pandering to a stereotype that plays well politically but misses the real issue.

The hearing was a pathetic display of politicians exploiting a panful issue for their own selfish political benefits, an example of the irresponsible leadership and hypocrisy that corrupts America's political system.