Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed accidentally made the best case for why parents should and do shelter their children.
The 2026 midterm election cycle isn't necessarily being fought on the culture-war battlefield. Still, some candidates, like El-Sayed, find themselves there. 60 Minutes host Ross Douthat sat down with El-Sayed on Oct. 22 at Wayne State University. The two discussed his campaign and potential policies should he beat Republican Mike Rogers in November.
During the interview, El-Sayed was asked how he squares his self-professed pro-Constitution, pro-individual rights views with issues like transgender athletes. His answer was telling, as it exposed a fundamental reason protective parents shield their children from technology.
Douthat: "What about the rights, what about the rights of parents to control over their children's education? Because a lot of places where there's tension between Islam and Muslim voters and what I'm calling cultural liberalism are around issues like what is taught in school? What happens with transgender kids on sports teams and so on, right? Like, these are places where rights are in conflict, right? What do you think happens there?"
El-Sayed: "The whole world, all the world's information in your pocket. The notion somehow that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school, is so profoundly outdated because, of course, you have all the information and they have all the information. So here's the thing about it. I think it's really important for us to recognize that the free flow of information is actually a beautiful thing. It's really important, and the most important thing you can do is not try to protect a person from seeing a thing. It's about trying to make sure that as you coach your kid through the world that you are engaging with them and saying, 'Here's what I believe. Here's what you may see in the world. You get to make your choices about who you're going to be in the world.' But that's going to require us to make do with the fact that, like, the internet is a real thing."
Is El-Sayed really arguing that parents should never try to protect children from anything because the internet exists? In theory, this would mean hardcore, violent porn and videos of suicide and murder. He and his supporters would likely object, claiming that these materials are not the same as exposing your children to transgender ideology. Still, the question he seemingly can't answer is: Who gets to decide where the line is drawn? (Sign up for Mary Rooke's weekly newsletter here!)
The internet is real, as El-Sayed pointed out. It is the largest source of information, our modern-day Library of Alexandria, just more depraved. However, acknowledging this does not mean parents must give their children access. Parents have a responsibility to do the opposite because protecting their innocence and bolstering their understanding of their family's moral code before they are inundated with harmful ideologies is critical to their development and to their connection to their family legacy.
He's essentially arguing that parents shouldn't protect their daughters from, say, seeing male genitals in their bathrooms or being paralyzed by a biological male on an opposing team because they have phones in their pockets that expose them to much worse. It's almost as if it never occurred to him that parents prohibit or restrict technology use with their children because they are trying to protect them from all these evils.
El-Sayed's answer validates the very parental instincts he calls "profoundly outdated." The parents who limit screen time, reject transgender ideology, and insist on sex-based categories in sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms are not in denial about the internet and are far more likely to be the same parents refusing to provide their children with a phone. They understand that unrestricted internet access does not produce wiser, freer children who are happy and well-adjusted. They see how earlier exposure to pornography, self-harm content, and radical ideologies destroys a child's sense of wonder and safety. (RELATED: The Cream Of The Crop Exam For College Entry Nothing Like It Used To Be. Study Shows Test-Makers Neutered It)
By making the idiotic argument that school-based protections are pointless because phones exist, El-Sayed inadvertently concedes that the modern digital environment for children is hostile to childhood. As much as he'd like to claim that this is about safeguarding rights, he's really making a false moral claim that parents have no authority to set boundaries. And the more chaotic and explicit our culture becomes, the more essential it is that parents reject him and retain the final say.
If parents were on the fence about whether their children should have a phone in their pocket, El-Sayed just made the best case for holding off.
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