A childcare worker said early exposure to social media and a lack of parenting are creating behavioral issues in school-aged children, like bullying, over-sexualization and aggression.
"I've dealt with these parents, and it is like they have them and then they shove them off to everybody else," Hannah Siegel, who has worked in children’s education for over seven years, told Fox News. "They let their teachers raise them, let their after-school programs raise them. When they're sitting at the dinner table after not seeing them all day, they put a tablet in front of their face. They don't have conversations."
"Then the kids, in turn, don't respect their parents because there's no relationship," she added. "You can't have respect without relationship."
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Siegel, 27, is a nanny and the Children’s Ministry Director at a Baptist church in Lakeland, Florida. She was previously an after-school director and a counselor for kids ranging from preschool through middle school.
Siegel is also one of many childcare professionals who have posted videos on TikTok expressing concern over the behaviors of Gen Alpha, Gen Z's successors comprised of kids born after 2009.
"I'm just going to say it. You guys are allowing the internet to raise your children," Siegel said in a video posted Dec. 14 and has garnered over 400,000 views.
Starting as early as age five, young girls are "sexualizing themselves, dressing in a way that's not age-appropriate, trying to wear makeup," Siegel told Fox News. They are also highly materialistic and bully peers for not owning cool, trendy brand-name items being marketed to them online, she said.
"These fourth-grade girls are on the playground twerking," Siegel said. "They are so mean and catty to each other. They're bullying each other because one girl’s parents can't afford to give her Lululemon."
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She said young boys are disrespectful to their teachers and mistreat girls their age in an attempt to be funny.
"They're trying to be like the YouTubers that they watch, but they're being so inappropriate," Siegel said.
She added that she’s seen many boys show signs of anger issues and "just not having very good emotional regulation, fist fighting on the playground in first grade. It’s crazy."
These issues stem from early exposure to social media, which leads to children "growing up too fast" and "wanting to be like their peers they see online or people who are much older than them," Siegel said.
A Morning Consult study published in March found that 54% of kids under 10 own at least one iPad.
While previous generations dealt with similar behaviors, Seigel, who is among the youngest of Millennials, said it's "way worse" than when she was a kid.
"The bullying, body-shaming, comparison and stuff like that, it would start in sixth, seventh, eighth grade," she said. "But now it just starts so young, and it's scary."
She blamed negligent parents who don’t monitor or restrict their children’s access to social media and turn a blind eye to bad behavior.
"Parents are uncomfortable disciplining their kids," Siegel told Fox News. "I think they're uncomfortable doing a lot of things like having awkward conversations. It's almost like they want to be their child's friend, and they're afraid to make them mad."
"They're never taking responsibility, and they're never having their child take responsibility for their actions," she added.
"If a device is put in front of a child the minute they start to fret or find things difficult, then that’s the only way they learn to cope with difficult feelings," Ryan Lowe, a child psychotherapist and spokesperson for the Association of Child Psychotherapists, told Vice. "Their behavior and their capacity to learn in classrooms will be significantly affected."
If things don’t change, the future could be "very scary" when these kids grow into adults, Siegel said. She added that a growing number of kids don't want to work, are only focused on becoming social media stars and lack any respect for authority.
"They have no emotional regulation, no social skills," Siegel told Fox News. "They don't know how to carry a conversation because when they're at home, they don't have to, they have a screen in front of their face."
