Drive @5 8-11-2026

The Drive at 5. The stories driving today's headlines. Brought to you by Servicemaster of Greater Pittsburgh. When disaster strikes, demand the yellow van. On 100.1 FM and AM 1020, KDKA. Did you hear the thunder in that service master spot? How about that? I had to go on my front porch the other night with my cell phone. And as it was thundering, I had to hold up my cell phone and capture the kind of ambient sound and then record it and then send it to someone here who mixed it all together, put it all into a spot. So that's real thunder. I was standing on my front porch and holding my phone up. kind of crazy the way that works. You'd think with advancements in technology, we could have just, you know, had some sort of, I don't know, there would be canned thunder, kind of like canned heat. But anyway, no, you would think there'd be canned thunder somewhere, but there wasn't. So that's how it all came to be for that spot. Anyway, 866-39-1-10-20 is at number 866-391-10-20. So Tamira had a story. I played a couple Tamira stories today. She was grinding it out from a reporter's standpoint. This is one that has me torn. There's no other way to put it. It has me torn. On one hand, I think the right thing is being done. On the other hand, I can't believe we've got to this place. Give a listen to this story where the legal field and TikTok... head, go headlong for an intersection and sort of crash together. Attorney General Dave Sunday announced the civil lawsuit today in Harrisburg. This legal action is a lawsuit against a social media giant TikTok, specifically how TikTok misrepresents its app as age appropriate for teens, as young as 13, who will then continue and consume the adult content on that app. Sunday accuses TikTok of using addictive features that can lead to unhealthy habits among young people. They want users, including children, to crave the app. They want users to endlessly scroll while they rake in astronomical ad revenue. I'm standing here today to say that enough is enough. He says more than 100 million Americans use TikTok, including about two-thirds of kids, ages 13 to 17. The civil lawsuit was filed in Allegheny Court of Common Pleas. Tomorrow, Russian News Radio, Katie K.A. Attorney General Sunday says, enough. He's a good man. He really is. No two ways about that. I know that he wants what's best for Pennsylvania. And I get it. I understand it. And he's putting his foot down. On the other side, I'm kind of torn here. Because lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit, we're going to spend money here. We're going to spend time. We're going to all of it. Resources.

on something that should never get past the parental level. It just shouldn't. But here we are. What's really going on is there's going to be lawsuits against the company because parents have forgotten how to parent in large part. We have lost the ability to actively parent. Too many people I think passively parent. Oh, what have you been doing in your room in the last five hours? Oh, nothing. Oh, okay, good. I was just checking up on you. I don't know, you parent the way you want, but for me, that's not your responsibility. It goes a lot deeper and it should be much more proactive. I don't need to do research about the addictive nature of TikTok. I'm not going to argue with you about that. But it's also addictive to go to McDonald's. It's also addictive to go to Hershey, Pennsylvania and eat a bunch of candy. TikTok shouldn't be looked at any differently. And maybe that's why we're way out of shape as a country, but it shouldn't be looked at any differently. Parents should put up guide rails, guardrails, and stop signs and have a forceful way of introducing themselves and injecting themselves into their kids' social media habits. Would it end this for good? No. Would it put a serious dent into it? I would bet yes. And now here we are getting attorneys involved, getting the state attorney general involved, who again is a good man in his heart's in the right place, and it's probably now the right thing to do. But how many of, I always go back to this, how many of these devices that kids have are paid for by kids? More so, it's not just the device proper. Because you can have the device. Heck, I can find one. You can go to Lost and Found and get a phone. You can get one donated. You got to have a plan, a cell phone plan. A step further is this, how many kids pay for their own cell phone plan? I'd venture against not very many. Probably a lot of parents are footing the bill for that. It's your responsibility and your job and your parental duty to cut that off if you don't see fit what they're doing or to check up on that or to not continuing to enable them to do these types of things. Is TikTok addictive? I'm sure it is. I'm quite positive it probably is. But we're missing one big safeguard here. One big kind of toll booth. And that's parents. How about stepping up and doing more here? And it wouldn't come to the point where there'd be a massive lawsuit on a statewide level. And a guy like Dave Sunday and his bunch wouldn't need to waste their time on something like this. There'd be far fewer cases of kids who were zombieed out, kids who were addicted to this, and kids who couldn't get their eyes and their fingers off of their phone. That's the way I feel about it. Again, but you parent the way you want and I'll parent the way that I want. It certainly is an addictive thing. But we've given up on this. We've allowed ourselves for some reason, so many parents.

That it's too difficult. It's too hard. I don't want to have this conversation. Oh, that's what keeps them happy. Oh, it's not hurting anyone. Oh, yeah, it is. How about doing a little more? How about acting like it is a problem? How about engaging your kids some? How about checking what's on their phone? More than, well, never. And maybe just maybe we wouldn't be here. Again. It's also crazy. It's grown out of hand. It's gotten out of hand at a rapid rate that now this is really the safeguard that has to be put into place. But it could have been quelled. It could have been stopped. It could have been slowed down. 100% so, I think. But too many parents want to be their kids' friends and they don't want to step in and be an authority figure. And now, here we are. Coming up in just a few minutes, I'm old. How am I old officially old? I'll explain in just a little bit.