A lonely generation is swiping right on machines



Today’s youth have never known life without a phone or internet access, and it shows.

Countless students have told me they are unable to be authentic with their parents or friends.

I rarely see a group of young people without phones in their hands. Texts, DMs, and Snaps are the norm for communicating, often creating shallow relationships and a false sense of community. This shallowness makes young people vulnerable to exploitation, which is why we must sound the alarm on the danger of using AI for friendship.

Nothing can, or ever will, replace the authentic, real love and hope found in other human beings.

As someone who regularly speaks on college campuses and has three young kids, I have seen firsthand the younger generation’s deficiency in forming personal connections. The lack of face-to-face interaction has made it difficult to engage with people outside the digital world — from avoiding job applications or being reluctant to introduce themselves to strangers to a general rise in anxiety in everyday life.

It’s no wonder we have a loneliness epidemic plaguing today’s youth. Between 17% and 21% of people ages 13 to 29 reported feeling lonely, according to a World Health Organization study, with the highest rates among teens.

In the midst of this epidemic, a growing number of young people are turning to AI for friendship. One study found that 25% of people under 30 are turning to AI for companionship. This number shows just how integrated AI has become in the lives of younger generations. We are watching youth learn to connect to machines at the age when they should be learning to connect with people, and the cost is becoming impossible to ignore.

The connection AI provides is not genuine. It is a synthetic, fleeting companion that doesn’t produce understanding, empathy, or relatability. And the more that teens use AI, the more trouble they have identifying what an authentic connection looks like.

Younger people, like everyone else, feel the need for an outlet. Many students have told me they struggle to be open and honest with their parents or friends. They think they will be judged, lectured, or misunderstood. They are afraid to expose their insecurities for fear of rejection or judgment, so they turn to the false sense of connection in AI. But it’s an illusion. The real world is so much richer and fulfilling than the temporary relief technology provides.

For many who seek comfort in AI, the end result is a feeling of further isolation and a realization that they have failed to build genuine relationships. They are left feeling even emptier than before.

We need to counteract this false narrative and teach our kids how to build lasting relationships with other people, not machines. Our children need to understand that AI cannot replicate or replace human connections.

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Life can get tough. Sometimes we face mountains we don’t think we can climb or situations we can’t take on alone. But there are communities out there that can help those who are struggling.

I am no stranger to loneliness myself. I felt depressed and alone enough that I almost ended my own life when I was 21. Suicide is not the solution to depression or loneliness — and neither is AI. What helped pull me out was not a program or chatbot, but something far greater and far more real: my faith in Christ and the real community of people in my life.

Jesus himself spent his time surrounded by his disciples and people seeking belonging. Human beings are hardwired to be part of a community. Parents need to show their children that there are churches, neighbors, peers, and many other people in the world whom they can lean on.

AI is not our friend. Nothing can, or ever will, replace the authentic, real love and hope found in other human beings. And that is a connection that does not require a Wi-Fi signal or password.

It only requires showing up.

How Social Media Created A Lost Generation Of Girls

What today’s young women are going through is quite new and demands new ways to respond.

Sara Gonzales calls out left’s hypocrisy over Michael Jackson biopic success



Many leftists pin their hatred of Donald Trump on their unproven claim that he was involved with Jeffrey Epstein — but that isn’t stopping them from supporting an alleged abuser at the box office.

And BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is tired of the hypocrisy.

“They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we hate pedophiles. We are the party against pedophiles, and the Republicans are always protecting pedophiles. If there’s anything we hate, it’s pedophiles,’” Gonzales mocks.

“Actually, that’s historically not been the case. Has not been the case, as documented with all of these Democrats involved with Jeffrey Epstein, but also they have apparently been crawling all over each other to go watch a movie about [an alleged] renowned kiddie diddler,” she continues.

The movie is Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic, which brought in a whopping $218.8 million globally over its opening weekend and became the biggest domestic opening of all time for any biopic.


“Michael Jackson, when it comes to him, technically he was cleared in the legal system in 2005,” Gonzales says, though she isn’t buying it.

And according to a report in People magazine, Gonzales may be on to something.

The report claims that the director of the biopic allegedly made an extra $25 million to remove child sex abuse allegations.

“That’s a lot of money to pay the director and a producer to remove things from the movie if they weren’t true,” Gonzales says, pointing out that it’s not the first time allegations of abuse have been suspiciously squashed.

“You also had the documentary ‘Leaving Neverland,’ which was 2019. And the biggest accusations that came out were highlighted in this. ... But guess what? If you missed it and you want to go back to check it out, you’re not going to be able to see it because the Jackson Estate sued to remove it from the internet, just like they buried it in the movie and got paid off,” she continues. “Are you sensing the trend yet?”

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There’s A New Name For Those Pierced, Weird-Looking Internet Addicts You Keep Seeing

The trends that were once confined to Discord servers and convention floors have now gone mainstream.

The trial lawyers come for online free speech



Trial lawyers are poised to accomplish in courtrooms nationwide what politicians have thus far failed to write into statute. The effects of this effort — undertaken without the deliberation of the nation’s representative bodies — are likely to rival those of even the most sweeping laws.

The product of social media platforms is not loaves of bread or pianos or widgets, it is speech, protected by the First Amendment.

A jury in Los Angeles is determining whether Meta and YouTube are liable for design features alleged to have substantially aggravated a young woman’s psychological disorders.

As thousands of similar lawsuits are ongoing — with more likely to follow — the determination of the Los Angeles jury will echo loudly in the deliberations of other juries across America.

These echoes will prove dissonant with Americans’ love for, and dedication to, free speech. Meta’s Instagram and YouTube were said to have disseminated speech too well, working too successfully to configure their products to maintain users’ interest.

This is supposed to constitute “addicting” their users. In fact, it is the aim of every business — from media organizations to retail stores to restaurants to attract and retain customers, to earn profits by marketing a product that consumers value.

In short, it is the business of entrepreneurs to give the people what they want. The product of social media platforms is not loaves of bread or pianos or widgets, it is speech, protected by the First Amendment.

Meta and YouTube are charged with having designed their products to include features — such as “infinite scroll” and individualized algorithmic recommendations — which allow and incentivize their users to view too much speech for too long.

As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy put it, “the plaintiff’s lawyers argued ... a theory that the case was not about the content but about theprocesses by which the platforms present the content." Despite titanic efforts to harden this distinction, it melts under the heat of elementary scrutiny. Platforms’ design features are impotent absent content that intrigues users.

Mike Masnick, editor of Techdirt, put it this way:

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine Instagram, but every single post is a video of paint drying. Same infinite scroll. Same autoplay. Same algorithmic recommendations. Same notification systems. Is anyone addicted? Is anyone harmed? Is anyone suing?

Social media algorithms sort and distribute speech — a function without which individuals could neither access speech online nor effectively find an audience for their own speech.

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Whatever the plaintiff’s attorneys contend, the liability imposed upon Meta and YouTube cannot be severed from the content they host and disseminate. Without the latter, the former would never be imagined, much less found by a jury.

The plaintiff in the case, a young woman known as Kaley or “KGM,” was brought up in anguishing conditions, the daughter of a mother who physically and emotionally abused her. She “was self-harming around when she was in the 6th grade,” reads the Associated Press account of the trial.

It is unsurprising that she, as a young girl, withdrew to social media to find something like peace, fulfillment, and satisfaction. It is equally unsurprising that she used social media to excess and leveraged her every chance to obtain engagement.

More generally, it is anything but certain that users’ affinity for social media is rightly termed an “addiction.” Likewise, research purporting to prove that social media has caused an epidemic of psychological disorders among children — the research of Jonathan Haidt, for example — has proven to be faulty, rife with faulty methodology and confirmation bias.

It is obvious that some misuse social media and their lives are, consequently, diminished. But this no more indicates that the platforms are “defective” in some legally cognizable sense than the mere existence of obesity in America indicates that McDonald’s or Taco Bell’s offerings are “defective” — or that fast-food restaurants ought to be held liable for occurrences of diabetes.

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Humans are a diverse bunch. That a minority, suffering from particular difficulties or vulnerabilities, cannot engage with this product or that in a healthy fashion should not, in a courtroom or the public square, constitute the basis of a totalizing rebuke.

Should the Los Angeles verdict stand, social media companies, confronted with the prospect of liability, are bound to remake their products to prevent any allegation — credible or otherwise — that their platforms cause or worsen whatever psychological distress from which users might suffer.

“If media companies must worry about liability whenever their expressive outputs are thought to be ‘harmful,’ the universe of available content would be reduced to the safest, blandest, and least engaging stuff imaginable,” warns Ari Cohn, the lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The operations of Instagram and YouTube broke no law enacted by Congress or a state legislature to regulate the workings of social media. Even so, this litigation, if successful, will be regulatory in its effect, resulting in the contracting of the free and open internet.

Congress Pressed To Help Iranian Civilians Connect to Internet

A coalition of advocacy groups petitioned House Foreign Affairs Committee leadership to immediately advance three pieces of bipartisan legislation that would help Iran's embattled population to access the internet, according to a copy of a Monday letter shared with the Washington Free Beacon.

The post Congress Pressed To Help Iranian Civilians Connect to Internet appeared first on .

Gen Z Doesn’t Have Enough Cultural Identity To Care About The Oscars

The sad result of a continuously fluctuating culture is a generation of young people who have no common cultural identity.

Trump’s Iran gamble: Peace Prize or Persian Gulf firestorm



Even after his theatrical State of the Union address, President Trump remains the only person who knows for certain whether the United States will strike Iran. That ambiguity does not signal confusion. It reflects a negotiator’s instinct: The threat of force often carries more value than force itself.

As a massive American armada gathers in the Persian Gulf — the region’s largest naval deployment since 2003, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R. Ford — the White House is also signaling that it still prefers a grand bargain to a regional war. For a president who has long said his legacy will rest on ending “endless wars” and who plainly covets a Nobel Peace Prize, a diplomatic breakthrough that dismantles Iran’s nuclear ambitions without a shot fired would be the ideal outcome.

The Geneva talks are more than another diplomatic set piece. They will test whether Trump’s 'art of the deal' can work against one of the most entrenched regimes in the Middle East.

The tension in Washington is palpable, and the president’s frustration is starting to show through his inner circle.

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, recently offered a revealing glimpse during a briefing on the Gulf buildup. Referring to the sweeping mobilization of ships, personnel, and equipment, Witkoff said Trump is "curious" that despite the gathering of this massive armada, Iran has not yet "capitulated.”

That remark gets to the heart of the standoff. The strategy is pure Trump: maximize leverage, restate the “zero enrichment” red line, and wait for the other side to conclude that its only path to survival runs through a signed deal. But the clerical regime in Tehran has proved more stubborn than even Trump appears to have expected.

As the third round of negotiations began in Geneva on Thursday, there were real reasons for cautious optimism, even as rumors of a “multi-stage interim deal” continued to circulate.

For all its revolutionary bluster and posturing over ballistic missiles, the Iranian regime is facing a deep internal crisis. The mass protests that erupted in late 2025 and continued into early this year — with a fresh wave of student-led strikes reported this week — have badly shaken the system. Even after a brutal crackdown and sweeping internet blackouts, the grievances have not disappeared. The economy is in ruins, the rial has hit record lows, and the public has no appetite for a full-scale war with a superpower.

Inside Tehran, the divisions are growing. Hard-liners within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still posture about delivering a “regret-inducing” response to American pressure. More pragmatic figures, however — reportedly now led by veteran negotiator Ali Larijani — are speaking more openly. They understand that a war with the United States could mean the end of the Islamic Republic itself. Reports suggest that even figures close to the supreme leader are searching for an off-ramp that preserves the regime’s core interests while winning enough sanctions relief to calm a restive population.

RELATED: ‘Can’t let that happen’: Trump stresses red line for Iran but holds out hope for peaceful resolution

Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images

The regional picture also favors Washington. Across the Gulf, Arab capitals are watching with a mix of anxiety and quiet approval. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others do not want their cities caught in the blast radius of a regional war. But they are also weary of Iran’s regional meddling and nuclear progress. They want Tehran checked without turning the Gulf into a battlefield. That gives Trump useful diplomatic cover to keep the pressure campaign in place while leaving the Geneva door open.

The Geneva talks are more than another diplomatic set piece. They will test whether Trump’s “art of the deal” can work against one of the most entrenched regimes in the Middle East.

By combining military pressure, economic punishment, and the lure of a sweeping agreement, Trump has pushed Tehran into a corner. The regime is learning that this White House has little interest in the incremental half measures of the past. Washington wants a broader settlement — one that reaches beyond the nuclear file to the wider balance of power in the region.

If a deal comes this week, it will likely come because Tehran concludes that domestic collapse poses a greater danger than diplomatic humiliation. For Trump, that would amount to a crowning achievement: proof that his transactional style can deliver where decades of conventional diplomacy failed.

In the high-stakes contest between Washington and Tehran, the winner may not be the side with the biggest fleet. It may be the side that best understands the other’s breaking point.

At Trump’s State of the Union, remember the free-market miracle in your pocket



President Trump will deliver the first State of the Union of his second term on Tuesday, an address that lands near the 250th anniversary of a nation built on freedom and enterprise. He will likely highlight ending foreign conflicts, restoring border security, reasserting American strength, and advancing his legislative agenda. He will point to economic gains — growth returning, inflation easing, energy prices falling, tax relief delivered, and markets responding. He will argue that the Trump economy is putting Americans back in charge of their own prosperity.

But one success story may not make the headlines: Under pro-investment, pro-competition policies, America’s wireless market has delivered lower prices, better service, and more choice — without mandates, price controls, or government-run networks.

Wireless shows free markets still work when Washington lets them.

Since Trump took office, wireless prices are down 4%. The White House even lists it as Win No. 132 in “365 Wins in 365 Days.” Backed by Bureau of Labor Statistics data, wireless plans and smartphones cost less in real dollars today than they did decades ago — while delivering hundreds of times faster speeds and vastly more data.

Twenty years ago, wireless networks mostly carried voice calls. Today they power work, school, health care, navigation, banking, entertainment, and small business. A wireless subscription also takes a declining share of the household budget.

That didn’t happen by accident. Competition, private investment, and smart policy drove it.

Better service, more choice, lower cost

Plans now deliver more data, faster speeds, and wider coverage than most people imagined 20 years ago. What once required a wired connection at home now works almost anywhere.

Fixed wireless access has helped drive that shift — home internet delivered over wireless networks. Nearly 15 million households now use wireless service instead of a fixed line, giving families a new, often cheaper alternative.

Americans also benefit from real choice. Most people are covered by three or more national wireless networks, each offering multiple brands, including lower-cost and prepaid options for families, seniors, students, and budget-conscious users. Dozens of smaller carriers and resellers add even more price competition. Companies need to earn customers’ business.

Wireless saves families real money

Wireless doesn’t just connect people — it cuts costs.

Parents save time and fuel by working remotely. Seniors can use telehealth instead of driving long distances. Students can learn from anywhere. Small businesses can reach customers without expensive storefronts or phone systems.

No other essential service — housing, health care, food, or energy — has improved this much while becoming more affordable. Wireless quietly delivers more value every year.

America leads because America invests

None of this works without investment. U.S. wireless companies invest about $30 billion a year to build and upgrade networks. Per person, that’s nearly double what Europe invests.

As a result, the United States leads the world in wireless performance, coverage, and innovation. That leadership didn’t come from government-run networks or price controls. It came from letting companies compete, invest, and take risks.

President Trump’s first-term spectrum auction raised a record $90 billion and helped fuel today’s 5G networks. Now FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is moving quickly toward another auction to free up more airwaves — the raw material wireless networks need to grow.

The spectrum bottleneck is real

Wireless runs on spectrum, and America is running tight.

Large blocks of valuable spectrum remain locked up by federal agencies, even when lightly used. Other countries — China, South Korea, and Japan — have moved faster to free spectrum for commercial use.

More spectrum means better service, more competition, and lower costs. Without it, growth slows and prices rise. That makes unlocking spectrum a national priority.

RELATED: Phones and drones expose the cracks in America’s defenses

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The hidden fee on your phone bill

Another problem stays mostly invisible to consumers.

The Universal Service Fund is meant to support rural connectivity and essential communications. But instead of being funded broadly, it gets tacked onto phone bills, often as a separate line item. Seniors and working families pay about $9 a month without ever voting on it.

Meanwhile, the biggest users of America’s networks — massive internet platforms — pay little or nothing into the system. They generate enormous traffic, earn billions, and rely on wireless infrastructure built by others.

President Trump has argued that Big Tech should pay its own way when it comes to energy-hungry AI data centers. The same principle should apply here. If you benefit from the network, you should help pay for it.

The bottom line

Wireless shows free markets still work when Washington lets them. Competition pushed prices down. Private investment built world-leading networks. Smart spectrum policy unlocked innovation.

Now policymakers face a choice: Protect what’s working, or burden it with bureaucracy and political favoritism. Free up more spectrum. Preserve real competition. End Big Tech’s free ride on infrastructure funded by American consumers.

If President Trump wants a model of American strength and market-driven success in his State of the Union, he doesn’t have to look far. It’s already in the hands of nearly every American holding a cell phone.

The fastest way to stop Iran’s killers ... without firing a single shot



The mullahs of Iran have resumed the familiar work of slaughtering their own people. (Again!) The United States can respond without firing a shot — and without waiting months for a traditional embargo to bite.

It can impose an electronic embargo.

An electro-embargo could do something sanctions often cannot: break the regime’s control quickly enough to matter while the killing is still underway.

Washington could pursue this approach unilaterally, or it could press the United Nations to authorize it under Article 41 of the U.N. Charter, which empowers the Security Council to order measures “not involving the use of armed force,” including the partial or complete interruption of “postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication.” The text already exists.

The question is whether anyone has the imagination — and the nerve — to use it.

The electronic advantage

In the context of Iran’s continuing humanitarian emergency, the United States, with a bit of diplomatic legerdemain from Ambassador to the U.N. Michael Waltz, could challenge the Security Council to act. China and Russia sit on the council. They will posture. They will threaten vetoes. But even a public debate would force them to explain why the world should tolerate a regime that murders civilian protesters in the streets.

If the Security Council approves an Article 41 action, the United States could then present its combatant commanders with something Iran has never faced at scale: an embargo not on goods but on electrons.

Physical embargoes remain a standard tool of statecraft. They also take time. Iran can evade, reroute, smuggle, barter, and stall. An electronic embargo moves at the speed of light.

Target Iran’s hardline regime — not the Iranian people — by degrading the communications infrastructure that allows the government to command and control its security forces and manage the extraction and export of oil, its primary source of hard currency.

Strike the regime’s hardened telephone and cellular systems, satellite communications, and broadcast television.

Cripple the internal nervous system that keeps the state coordinated, disciplined, and armed.

The effect would be immediate. A regime that cannot communicate cannot coordinate raids, deploy forces efficiently, jam dissident signals, or maintain operational tempo. It cannot manage a modern oil export apparatus without functioning networks. It cannot run a crackdown in real time if it loses the ability to issue orders and track compliance.

The ‘Venezuelan formula’

Just as important, an electronic embargo could reverse the regime’s favorite trick: cutting the Iranian people off from each other and from the outside world. Tehran has already tried to block the internet and throttle social media. A targeted electronic campaign could negate that control and unleash an information tsunami — one the mullahs cannot shape, censor, or contain.

That shift matters. When citizens can communicate, organize, document, and broadcast, repression becomes harder and riskier. The regime loses its monopoly on narrative. Fear starts to spread in the other direction.

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erhui1979 via iStock/Getty Images

One can imagine a greatly expanded “Venezuelan formula”: degrade internal communications, then use broadcast means to confuse and complicate the regime’s grip on what is happening — while simultaneously encouraging the population to resist theocratic authority. The goal would not be spectacle. The goal would be collapse: the steady unraveling of the regime’s confidence, coherence, and control.

In this mode, a combatant commander could employ SOFTWAR principles to engage and degrade the mullahs through coordinated, non-kinetic lines of operation. Properly executed, such a campaign would affect nearly every aspect of Iranian society — and it would do so without turning Iranian cities into ruins.

A greater strategic payoff: China

The strategic payoff for the United States extends beyond moral clarity. It comes down to oil — and to China.

The recent decapitation of the Maduro junta in Venezuela proved a point many analysts ignore. The key factor is not the quantity of oil in a given country. It is control of the flow of oil. Energy states matter because they can fuel, fund, and sustain adversaries.

If the mullahs fall, China loses a major energy supplier at a moment when it can least afford disruption. Beijing’s ambitions depend on stable inputs. Xi Jinping’s dream of Chinese communist hegemony runs on energy. Remove an important provider, and you squeeze China’s strategic bandwidth — again.

That result alone justifies exploring an electronic embargo.

This is not a call for war. It is a call to use power creatively, within the bounds of international law when possible, and in defense of a population being beaten, shot, and silenced by its rulers.

The mullahs survive by controlling the physical streets and the electronic space above them. Take away the second, and the first becomes harder to hold.

An electro-embargo would not solve every problem. But it could do something sanctions often cannot: break the regime’s control quickly enough to matter while the killing is still underway.