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Fox News host Trey Gowdy highlighted alarming statistics about teenage girls and their struggles with mental health, including persistent sadness, hopelessness and suicidal thoughts on “Sunday Night in America“. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from 2011 to 2021 the number of teenage girls feeling sad or hopeless had increased from 36% to 57%, and 21% to 29% for teenage boys.

Gowdy claimed this is the “double-edged nature of technology,” which allows social media to be used for good or harm. 

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held the “Protecting Our Children Online” hearing on kids’ online safety. Both U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., pledged to “act swiftly” to address “Big Tech’s ongoing harms to kids.”

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY PROPOSES LEGAL AGE TO ALLOW KIDS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Emma Lembke, the founder of Log Off, a movement to encourage “healthy” use of social media, joined “Sunday Night in America” to discuss the harmful effects of social media on young people’s mental and physical health.

In describing her personal experience with social media, Lembke said, “At the age of 12, I downloaded my first social media account, Instagram, and as I began to spend more time on these apps, my mental and physical health suffered from the constant quantification of my worth through likes and comments and followers, my anxiety was heightened, my depression was deepened.”

Lembke said the “constant exposure to unrealistic body standards” led her towards “disordered eating and in a direction that was not great” for her mental and physical health.

Gowdy presented the facts that a 12-year-old cannot sign a contract, vote, buy tobacco or alcohol, nor see certain movies, so he asked Lembke why she thinks social media companies may think it’s “okay for a 12-year-old child to have access to all of their platforms when there are so many other things they cannot do?”

‘OUTNUMBERED’ GOES OFF ON SCHOOL DISTRICT AFTER BULLIED TEEN’S SUICIDE: ‘THESE PEOPLE DID NOTHING’

“Well, the answer is easy. For these big tech platforms, the more eyeballs they have on the screen, the more profit they make,” Lembke said. “So what these companies are doing is, no matter the age, no matter how old the user is, they are going to try to maximize that attention, to maximize profit. When in reality, what it’s causing is this fueling of the youth mental health crisis that we face today. And frankly I think that, what we’re facing is the big tobacco of my generation, it’s social media. Unregulated social media has become this weapon of mass destruction for my generation.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from 2011 to 2021 the number of teenage girls feeling sad or hopeless has increased.

When pressed for solutions Lembke claimed she would “lean away from age verification” and focus on one fundamental question: “How is it that we make online spaces safer when kids decide to enter?”

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Lembke continued, “I think two things have to come into play. One, these companies need to be regulated to have safeguards, like the highest level of privacy by default built in to these platforms. And two, we need to see a greater algorithmic transparency, so we can begin to, as a society, build solutions that are effective based off of how young people are harmed. And what we need is that data and that is not something we have right now.”

A nearly 1,000-pound meteor measuring two feet wide crashed into South Texas on Wednesday, according to reports.

Fox station KDFW in Dallas reported that NASA confirmed the meteor broke apart as it fell through the atmosphere to its resting place near McAllen, Texas, at about 6 p.m.

A meteor from the Geminids meteor shower enters the Earth’s atmosphere past the stars Castor and Pollux (two bright stars at right) on Dec. 12, 2009, above Southold, New York. (Stan Honda / AFP via Getty Images)

“Although meteorites tend to hit Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds, they slow as they travel through the atmosphere, breaking into small fragments before hitting the ground. Meteorites cool rapidly and generally are not a risk to the public,” NASA said in a statement.

METEORIOID EXPECTED TO SAFELY STRIKE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE SUNDAY EVENING OVER FRANCE

The space agency posted a report of the incident along with a map showing an area where pieces of the meteor likely landed.

KDFW posted a video captured from a home security camera with birds scattering and the sound of a sonic boom.

According to the National Weather Service in Brownsville/Rio Grande Valley, multiple people reported a possible meteor in the sky west of McAllen. The weather agency also reported that the flash from the meteor was captured by a Geostationary Lightning Mapper right before 5:30 p.m.

WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE REVEALS STELLAR CLUSTERS FROM DISTANT GALAXIES

The lightning mapper satellite measures lightning from space, and in a Facebook post on Wednesday, the NWS said there was no thunderstorm activity in the area when the meteor crashed.

Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra posted to Twitter that he was informed by air traffic controllers in Houston that two aircraft reported that they also saw a meteor in the sky near McAllen.

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“The meteor seen in the skies above McAllen is a reminder of the need for NASA and other organizations to increase our understanding and protection of Earth, to combine scientific and engineering expertise to advance human space exploration, to integrate terrestrial and planetary research for furthering our understanding of the solar system, and to promote successful space missions by mitigating risk,” NASA said.

A shooting Sunday night along a Mardi Gras parade route in New Orleans left one person dead and four others wounded, according to police.

The incident on the Bacchus parade route occurred at around 9:30 p.m. local time at the intersection of St. Charles Ave. and Terpsichore St., a spokesperson for the New Orleans Police Department told FOX News Digital.

A shooting Sunday night at a parade route in New Orleans, Louisiana, left one person dead and four others wounded. (WVUE)

Three of the five victims were men, along with a woman and a young girl.

LOUISIANA POLICE ARREST 19-YEAR-OLDS IN ‘TARGETED’ BATON ROUGE NIGHTCLUB SHOOTING THAT LEFT 12 WOUNDED

The victims were all transported to a hospital for medical treatment. The girl and all but one of the other victims are in stable condition. The remaining victim, one of the men, has been pronounced dead.

Map of New Orleans Mardi Gras fatal shooting.

A suspect was taken into custody in connection with the shooting shortly after shots were fired, police said. 

Two weapons were also confiscated.

SUSPECT IN LSU STUDENT MADISON BROOKS’ ALLEGED RAPE ARRESTED AGAIN, ACCUSED OF THIRD SEX CRIME

A suspect was taken into custody in connection with the shooting. (WVUE)

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Police were in the vicinity of the scene when shots were fired. 

The New Orleans Police Department, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Department, Louisiana State Police and the Department of Corrections assisted in the response to the shooting, which is under investigation. 

Police are working to gather information about the suspect along with a possible motive, and to determine if additional people were involved.