Many critics warned that COVID-related lockdown policies would leave a devastating impact on the nation's children.

Among them was longtime television host Dr. Phil McGraw, and during a recent appearance on "The View," he argued that those warnings have been vindicated. 

CDC data points to declining mental health

According to Mediaite, McGraw began by claiming that the upswing in childhood depression, anxiety and other mental health problems began in 2008 with the rise of smart phones.

McGraw, who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, asserted that this was the point at which children "stopped living their lives and starting watching people live their lives."

"And so we saw the biggest spike and the highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidality since records have ever been kept," he explained.

Data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that the number of youth aged 6–17 who were diagnosed with either anxiety or depression "increased from 5.4% in 2003 to 8% in 2007 and to 8.4% in 2011–2012."

"Who takes away the support system for these children?"

Next, McGraw shifted focus to COVID-era lockdown policies, saying, "And it’s just continued on and on and on, and then Covid hits 10 years later, and the same agencies that knew that are the agencies that shut down the schools for two years."

"Who does that?" McGraw demanded. "Who takes away the support system for these children? Who takes it away and shuts it down?"

"And by the way, when they shut it down, 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 and referrals dropped 50 to 60%," McGraw complained.

The celebrity psychologist's words led to a heated exchange as "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin, who said, "There was also a pandemic going on and they were trying to save their lives."

CDC figures show only a tiny fraction of COVID dead were children

Fellow co-host Whoopi Goldberg chimed in as well, asserting, "So, remember, we know a lot of folks who died during this."

When McGraw said that school children rarely died of COVID, Goldberg suggested it was "because they kept them out of the places that they could be safe because no one wanted to believe we had an issue."

However, McGraw replied that kids "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," adding, "That's not an opinion, that’s a fact."

Figures published by the CDC show that between January 2020 and September 2023, just 1,696 people aged 17 and under died of COVID.