00:02:22.580to try to fix this problem because you know what? The government's not going to fix it.
00:02:27.080Big tech's not going to fix it. It is up to us. It's up to us to push them, to push them to make
00:02:34.580the changes that we know, that we just know are going to protect our kids. This episode is so
00:02:40.480important. This is one of those episodes that you're going to want to share, that you're going
00:02:44.400to want to share with your family, with your friends, maybe even listen with your teenager,
00:02:49.380Okay? It's that important. It really is.
00:02:53.200Okay. So, hi. I'm Julie Scalfo. I am a mom. I'm a recovering journalist. I used to be a dancer. I live in New York.
00:03:06.940i am trying to hang on to the things that make us human and encourage other people to do the same
00:03:15.320and i like good food including this incredible pistachio butter i ate last night from greece
00:03:24.420that was like amazing i also like good food and pistachio butter and pistachio cream generally
00:03:32.360is an underrated condiment here in the United States. It's something that I buy a lot when
00:03:38.020I'm in Sicily. You can get it from the grocery store there for about $3, 3 euros. And I put it
00:03:44.880on everything. Everything. So good. So good. So good. I love this kind of introduction because
00:03:51.120it immediately moves us into different kinds of conversations. And I just think that we should
00:03:55.660all introduce ourselves like this all the time with our humanity fully forward. And that's what
00:04:02.700I want to talk to you about. You just said when you were introducing yourself that you're trying
00:04:07.460to hold on to the things that make us human. What does that mean to you? Well, I'm not
00:04:16.720going to pretend that I am an expert on being human. I think that I've spent most of my life
00:04:25.500trying to learn how to be human, how to get in touch with my emotions. And I'm a parent of three,
00:04:33.480and I think I'm somebody who maybe wasn't so emotionally intelligent for most of my life
00:04:40.160and was late to sort of learning the importance of emotional intelligence. And when I became a
00:04:45.380parent, I have three kids. They're all boys. They were born within five years of one another.
00:04:50.140I had to learn how to nurture them and give them what they needed in the way that they needed it.
00:04:57.820For example, if one of my boys hit a brother, a lecture on alternative methods of justice is not an effective way to communicate with a two-year-old.
00:05:10.440I had to learn a lot about what is called social and emotional development.
00:05:17.040And that really connected to the reporting that I was doing on the media and mental health.
00:05:23.660And what I was seeing when I reported on youth suicide, which was that we have this national emergency in youth mental health and kids are not really getting the tools they need to grow up in a healthy way.
00:05:39.680It's true. And so all of this, it's like you've been training for this marathon your whole life, and it's all culminated in this thing. It led you to create something that I am so excited about. I want to be a part of this organization. Can you tell me what you've done?
00:05:59.100sure so i'm the founder of mama which is mothers against media addiction and mama is a grassroots
00:06:06.660movement of parents fighting back against media addiction and creating a world where real life
00:06:11.580experiences and interactions remain at the heart of healthy childhood and the reason i created mama
00:06:17.820is because right now in the united states the number two cause of death to 10 year olds is
00:06:23.580suicide, which means that more 10-year-olds are dying at their own hands than from every form of
00:06:29.900cancer combined. And when I realized this, when I reported on this, and when I talked to kids who
00:06:37.680had survived suicide attempts, when I talked to families who had lost their children, something
00:06:43.620really kind of shifted in me, you know, after years of being a journalist and reporting on what was
00:06:50.640happening. I just couldn't live with this reality. You know, I wanted this to stop. And I didn't
00:06:56.680understand as a parent, as an adult, how we were allowing all of these harms to come to our
00:07:03.100children. So I created this movement because we live in a world that is very pro-tech. We live
00:07:11.540in a world that is very consumer oriented. Millions, if not billions of dollars are spent
00:07:17.780on trying to convince us all that we need products to be happy, that we always need the latest gadget
00:07:23.300or we're going to be, quote unquote, left behind. When in reality, the things that make people
00:07:27.960happy, the things that give children the fundamental tools to grow up in a healthy way,
00:07:36.580and by healthy, I mean feeling secure, feeling attached, actually have nothing to do with
00:07:40.500products and all stem from human connectedness. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I feel like this is
00:07:46.620something that parents truly do know on a rational level, or at least most parents,
00:07:52.820but the tech industry is very strong. They're very strong. They have so much money. They have
00:07:58.400so much lobbying power. They own many politicians, and I don't think it's crazy or a conspiracy
00:08:06.100theory to say that. So what kind of work is Mama, which is an excellent name, by the way,
00:08:13.360perfect name. What kind of work is Mama doing to try to shift this, to try to try to make this1.00
00:08:20.780better? So Mama has a three-part mission to start. Our mission is parent education,1.00
00:08:27.880getting smartphones out of schools, and demanding safeguards. And the reason we have that three-part
00:08:34.740mission is because too few parents are really aware of all the harms. Unfortunately, what seems
00:08:41.060to be happening is that people just kind of think of these devices as harmless or neutral. They give
00:08:46.940them to their kids, and it isn't until after their child has a problem, after their child develops an
00:08:52.680eating disorder, they're cutting themselves, they, you know, are checking out, they don't want to
00:08:58.080socialize anymore that parents realize there's an issue. So that's why we do parent education.
00:09:02.860Getting smartphones out of schools is because school is supposed to be a place where kids can
00:09:07.000learn, where they socialize, they develop friendships, connections with teachers. And
00:09:11.520there's lots of evidence that the presence, just the presence of a smartphone actually diminishes
00:09:16.860people's ability to concentrate. We know that these apps, which are designed to keep you
00:09:21.540constantly engaged and to, you know, they're sending notifications all day to try to addict
00:09:25.760you and get you to keep checking, that those are interfering with kids' ability to concentrate.
00:09:30.420And we know that when kids have smartphones, they're using their school time to be on the
00:09:35.820smartphone. They're, you know, in the cafeteria instead of playing games, talking, you know,
00:09:41.560kids are on their devices. The reason we're demanding safeguards, because many people don't
00:09:47.300realize there's been no meaningful regulation passed on social media since the 1990s, which is
00:09:53.460when we were all dialing up AOL with our phone lines and using floppy disks. And since that time,
00:09:59.380social media algorithms have been honed and honed and honed to really exploit our emotions for profit.
00:10:04.400And they're exploiting children's emotions for profit. And this is causing so many harms so that just a couple of social media companies are making gobs of profit. And, you know, I have no problem with people making profit, but I do have a problem with people making profit on the backs of children who are suffering so tremendously. So that's why we're demanding safeguards.
00:10:28.420Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Again, no problem with profit, no real problem with decent moral capitalism, but problems with people doing this by exploiting children, which I think is exactly what these companies are doing at this point.
00:10:47.080I want to take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk about parental education.
00:10:51.800What are the top things that you want parents to know? Like, what are the things that they that
00:10:57.920will, you know, just like kind of kind of spark change for them? The high level things that we
00:11:03.260can tell people. Under the Influence is brought to you by Tropical Smoothie Cafe. Tropical Smoothie
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00:12:08.940So the high-level things are really delay, delay, delay.
00:12:12.360That's the easiest thing that parents should know.
00:12:14.500The longer you can wait to give your child a device of any kind,
00:12:18.280be it a phone, a tablet, certainly social media,
00:12:21.620the better chance they stand of developing healthy, robust neurobiological tools, emotional tools,
00:12:30.460social tools that enable them to deal with these very complicated, difficult things once they do
00:12:35.760have access. We adults have all kinds of challenges on social media. It's hard to
00:12:40.580engage in conversation in a way that doesn't inadvertently send the wrong message.
00:12:45.940You know, these products, these places are designed to inflame us and get us worked up.
00:12:52.740But then if we respond in an emotionally charged way, we're not always thinking through what we're saying before we say it.
00:12:58.640So, you know, the longer you can delay giving kids devices, the better off they will be.
00:13:04.820You know, the other big part of parent education that we work on is helping parents realize that they can't do this alone.
00:13:10.680You know, for too long, we've expected parents to be able to manage these things.
00:13:14.700And guess what? We can. You know, I've got three kids. I signed up for every software that was out there, every parent control, every product that was supposed to notify me when the kids encountered something dangerous. And guess what? I was getting like over 100 emails a day. That's how much terrible content there is.
00:13:32.900And when I say terrible, you know, what I mean is NC-17 content.
00:13:39.460I like to look at all kinds of things on the Internet.
00:13:42.200You know, I'm like, you know, you name it.
00:13:45.540I've supported like feminist empowerment, you know, body dancers like woohoo.
00:13:50.860But do I want my 12 year old son seeing that stuff?
00:13:53.840And necessarily it's not really like for him developmentally to have access to that stuff yet.
00:13:58.920So parents need to understand that on some level, we can't control what our kids see if they have access to spaces that are not safe and they're not designed to be safe.
00:20:42.240We'll talk a little bit about legislation and lobbying and what it's going to take to
00:20:47.560get the government involved? Do we need government oversight of these tech companies? I don't
00:20:54.740personally think we can do it alone. I'd love to hear what you think and what kind of laws are the
00:20:59.320most effective. So for effectiveness in legislation, I look to other countries that are far ahead of us.
00:21:08.020You know, Europe has GDPR, and that is a basic data privacy protection set of laws that say that
00:21:16.480you as an individual are entitled to your privacy as a human right. And what that means is if
00:21:21.740somebody goes and uses AI to make pornography and says it's you and takes a photograph of you and
00:21:28.780puts it on a body that belongs to somebody else and distributes it, you have the legal right to
00:21:34.160fight back. In the United States, we have no such laws. We have also a law called Section 230,
00:21:40.740which currently holds social media companies immune from absolutely anything that goes on
00:21:47.160their platform. When they made that law, it kind of made sense, right? Like if I picked up the phone
00:21:52.640and I called you and said, let's rob a bank, like nobody thinks we could sue Verizon for that
00:21:57.760because they're just the carrier. And social media, when it started, they thought they were
00:22:01.880just the carrier. But the social media companies actually designed algorithms that intentionally
00:22:07.780amplify certain types of content, like hate speech, like anything violent, anything that
00:22:12.940prioritizes engagement, right? So Section 230, I think, has contributed to a lot of these problems
00:22:19.500and may need to be overturned at some point. So in the United States, we've had lawmakers who have
00:22:26.180been proposing some laws. Right now, the Kids Online Safety Act, which apparently is coming
00:22:30.640up for a vote this week. I hope it will. It has 70 co-sponsors in the Senate. Tripartisan,
00:22:36.740Republican, Democrats, and an independent. And so we need some improvements in our policy that make
00:22:44.880it illegal for social media companies to intentionally amplify harmful content. It's
00:22:51.980profitable right now to amplify hate groups. It's profitable to amplify myths and disinformation
00:22:57.200and content that's harmful for kids. That needs to stop. Mama does not do lobby work or a 501c3,
00:23:04.480But we do advocate for safeguards. And what that means is some safeguards, whether it's at the state or the federal level, we just think it's time to put kids before big tech profits. So those are the different types of things that are in the works on the federal and state level. And I'm sorry, Joe, you have to remind me your question because I could talk about the legislation for hours and I don't want to bore you.
00:23:27.160So you're not, no, my goodness, you are not boring me at all.
00:23:30.640I mean, well, you're answering exactly the question that I want to know.
00:23:33.720Because, you know, we do hear a lot about this legislation.
00:23:37.520But I think, first off, it doesn't get nearly enough news coverage.
00:23:41.180I don't think it breaks through the way that it should be when it comes to, like, you know, through the wall of terrible clickbait news that we see every single day.
00:23:51.180Because also, let's be honest, a lot of the tech companies are controlling what kind of news we're reading.
00:23:56.080That's that's a huge issue. We've seen it. It's called shadow banning. Like we if we post something that's critical of meta or Instagram, for some reason, it doesn't show up in people's feeds. So that definitely exists. And that definitely makes this work extra challenging because so many people are only using social media to get their information.
00:24:15.300it's true it's true i mean yes i mean same same same here right i have a podcast that's very
00:24:21.860critical of social media uh and i get shadow banned all the time all the time going back to
00:24:28.140your question though you know one way we like people to think about this you know as a parent
00:24:32.660i'm responsible for feeding my kids nutritional foods right that's my job but at the same time
00:24:37.900nobody expects parents to make sure the food supply is safe nobody expects parents to make
00:24:42.460sure baby formula is safe, that there's no wood chips in the baby formula. You know, we need to
00:24:47.200have a policy so that it's at a much broader level to ensure that the baby formula is safe so that
00:24:53.820when a parent goes and buys it, we can give it to our child with confidence. Last year, there was an
00:24:59.780electric skateboard that came out, and within the first two months it was on the market, four
00:25:03.880children died. And so the product was immediately recalled. There are hundreds of children who have
00:25:09.420died because of social media harms. We know this because of all of the lawsuits that have been
00:25:13.980filed, because of the attorney general's lawsuits. So why haven't we recalled social media? You know,
00:25:19.460that's kind of the question that I keep asking myself. So, you know, we want parents to understand
00:25:24.840that this isn't their fault. You know, the world's best product designers are making these apps.
00:25:29.820They're setting the notifications. They're creating designs that are as addictive as possible.
00:25:34.220and also to get them to think about it differently. Right. Like it's it's we need to create a world
00:25:39.940and a society that is safe for kids and that doesn't inflict all of this emotionally harmful
00:25:44.780stuff on kids. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many ways of thinking about it, too. You know,
00:25:50.740I don't give my kids soda, even though I mean, I grew up drinking so much soda. I don't give them
00:25:56.700soda or I haven't for a while. And now, like once in a while, they get a treat at a restaurant. I'm
00:26:01.000like, okay, cool, you can have a Coke. Great. But I'm not letting them mainline Coca-Cola,
00:26:07.040okay? Because I know it's a sugary snack and it's fucking bad for them. In the same way that, like,0.99
00:26:12.340I'm not saying get rid of all technology, but, like, let's just have better rules and regulations
00:26:18.800and understanding about it. And I think a lot of the things with tech, too, is that it's one of
00:26:24.000those things that parents are like, well, I don't want to get rid of mine. So I guess I just won't
00:26:28.660I'll look the other way when it comes to my kids, because I don't want to give it up.
00:26:48.580And we realized that most of the reading we were doing was on our devices and that the
00:26:53.720children were just seeing us stare at the screens and and they they almost never saw us holding a
00:26:59.320book or report so we instituted a family reading hour on Sundays where every Sunday you had to get
00:27:04.640a book or a magazine or a graphic novel and we all sat together and we read and of course they
00:27:10.440complained like crazy and they made it miserable for the first few times but then after a couple
00:27:15.220weeks like it became really special like we were all cuddling it was fun and we didn't do it forever
00:27:19.900I think it lasted like a year. But it actually was a critical turning point in my child's development because they saw us reading from books. And now we make a conscientious effort to put our phones away. And, you know, we subscribe to magazines and newspapers. We buy books and they see us with the books. And I think that that makes a difference.
00:27:39.140Totally. I think about that all the time when it comes to media literacy. I mean, as a journalist
00:27:43.680as well, you know, I grew up seeing my parents read the local newspaper, read the New York Times.
00:27:49.240We watched the local news. We watched Nightline. You know, we watched 60 Minutes. I saw news and
00:27:56.040reading modeled for me. Our kids just see you staring at a phone. They don't know what you're
00:28:02.000looking at. They don't know if it's YouTube. They don't know if it's Instagram. They don't know if
00:28:06.340you're reading the New York Times because they can't see your screen. And so we've been trying
00:28:10.060to do that, too. I try to read magazines in front of them as much as possible. If I'm just sitting
00:28:15.960on the couch, I'll make a conscious effort to thumb through a magazine instead of thumbing
00:28:20.380through a phone. And I think I think that truly matters. I really do. I do, too. I mean, and
00:28:27.020there's scientific evidence of this. A big study came out of Stanford. It's called the Stanford
00:28:33.940Historian Education Group a couple of years ago, where they surveyed 30,000 students,
00:28:38.960middle, high school, and college to see how they could differentiate different types of
00:28:44.380information online. And what they found is that their ability to do that was terrible, meaning
00:28:50.240that a young person looking at online content, if it was coming from a news organization,
00:28:56.040if it was coming from a scientific journal, if it was coming from an advertiser, if it was coming
00:29:00.180from like, you know, somebody's blog, they couldn't differentiate the different quality
00:29:05.420of information. And being able to do that is so critical for our democracy, right? Like you need
00:29:10.460quality information. And so that essential skill, which is something that you do in school, you learn
00:29:18.740how to check references, you learn the difference between what's a legitimate reference and what's
00:29:24.560not, you know, the internet has broken all that down. And I think honestly, as a journalist that
00:29:29.800that our industry deserve some of the blame for that because we just kind of jumped into using
00:29:34.780social media. And so things that were legitimate journalism look the same online as like, you know,
00:29:41.140I don't want to call any companies out by name, but like celebrity websites or, you know,
00:29:46.680somebody's personal blog. And it makes it harder for people to differentiate. So, you know, parents
00:29:51.640can play a role in that we need better habits by mainstream media and professional news organization
00:29:58.900to make sure they're not showing up in the public in the same way as untrustworthy content.
00:30:05.600And I also think, you know, going back to this, the question you asked earlier about
00:30:10.520sort of exposing kids to things before it's time.
00:30:14.260You know, when I started Mama, I was actually like a little reluctant about it because I
00:30:19.160was thinking about when I was a kid and Tipper Gore was coming out and, you know, it was
00:30:26.220Like, am I a prude for not wanting my kids to see things?
00:30:28.420And I was like, you know, I can accept that my sons are going to see some pornography before they go off to college, but I don't want it mainlined to my 10-year-old.
00:30:37.480And I don't think that makes me a prude.
00:30:39.020Like, I want my children to be able to, like, have a first kiss in the world before they, like, see, like, you know, word court S&M.
00:30:47.500And those types of things, there's absolutely no filters on social media.
00:30:51.620So those types of things are being sent to children.
00:31:24.700what has you feeling good about the future? So I cannot even believe the response that we're
00:31:30.380getting to Mama. Sometimes when I introduce myself and the organization name, people don't
00:31:36.100even let me explain and they say, oh, thank God, where have you been? You know, there is such a
00:31:41.100widespread awareness now among adults and even young people themselves that a screen-based future
00:31:48.840is not what we want. It does not feel good to sit in front of a machine for 10, 12, 14 hours a day.
00:31:55.100It does not feel good to only have relationships with people on Zoom or by text message. In-person,
00:32:02.940real face-to-face community is the thing that has sustained our species for millennia, and it's the
00:32:09.820thing we need to sustain us going forward. And so the groundswell of support for Mama has me so
00:32:16.400overwhelmed with joy because parents, teachers, educators, therapists, they're all saying enough
00:32:23.320is enough. We need to push back against our tech overlords and insist that we protect real life
00:32:29.420experiences for the future. So that really inspires me. I'm also inspired by all the young
00:32:34.560people who are joining this fight. I mean, it makes me mad and sad that, you know, young people1.00
00:32:39.780feel like they have to fight this fight. Like we're the adults and we shouldn't have put them
00:32:43.600this position. But there are many groups popping up, design it for us and code justice, have the
00:32:49.900story. And those are young people joining the fight to insist that the Internet and social
00:32:56.340media is safer. So I'm really optimistic about that. I'm really optimistic about the number of
00:33:01.340lawmakers who, despite the tech lobby, which has unlimited amounts of money. And I think there was
00:33:07.740a report. I think there's one lobbyist for every eight lawmakers in Washington representing the
00:33:13.860tech industry. And there's actually, sorry, one for every four lawmakers. And Meta itself has a
00:33:20.160lawmaker for every eight law. Sorry. Meta itself has a lobbyist for every eight lawmakers. So
00:33:26.660despite all of that power that the tech company has, the people power here really is truly a
00:33:32.000beautiful thing. And I love seeing all the different communities that are standing up and
00:33:37.160saying, no, like we're going to give our kids a future where joy is at the center of their
00:33:41.720experience. Yeah. I, you know, when I mentioned mama to people and because I've been so excited
00:33:48.560about our interview and the work that you're doing, and I will immediately apply to do this
00:33:54.640in Pennsylvania. People do, they stop me before I can even finish. And they're like, we need this
00:33:59.840now. How can we get more of this? What can I do? How can I help? There is a hunger for this.
00:34:04.260Uh-huh. And I just, that makes me really excited, too. My own kids make me excited because I'm not
00:34:12.200in the place that a lot of parents of tweens are. I have a seven-year-old, a four-year-old,
00:34:17.660and a baby baby. But we're, I think we're doing the best we can to start well in the beginning
00:34:25.280to make them highly critical of all of these things. You know, we have a babysitter who's
00:34:31.480on TikTok all the time, you know, and she's not supposed to be. But, like, my kids mock her for
00:34:36.200it, which I kind of support. I'm like, it's not kind to mock your babysitter, but you can
00:34:40.620totally mock her for this. So, you know, mama will not, you know, come out in support of mocking.
00:34:49.520That's not kind. You will not. You do not have to. No. There is something to be said, and we are
00:34:55.360seeing a lot of teenagers and young people who are going the other way, who are getting flip
00:34:59.520phones who are creating their own Luddite clubs because they're saying, you know, do we want to
00:35:04.740be zombies walking around with our heads in the phone all the time? So, you know, I feel very
00:35:10.100blessed that my kids who are older than yours, they're all three teenagers now, you know, we've
00:35:16.040made it through early childhood. We've had our own challenges. Like I am not a parenting expert and
00:35:20.860there's no parenting mistake that I haven't made many, many times over. And I delayed giving them
00:35:25.740phones until they were 12 and absolutely regret giving them those devices so early. Now that I
00:35:32.940know what I know, I wish I had delayed it even longer. However, I have been able to, you know,
00:35:38.860give them a lot of media literacy, encourage them to think very critically before they do anything
00:35:43.620online and to think about, you know, who the product is, right? Like if you're not paying for
00:35:49.360it, you know, you are the product and they don't want to be taken advantage of in that way. So
00:35:54.980we've been able to give them a lot of outdoor experiences, real life experiences. And, you
00:36:01.820know, they're in community with a lot of different people. And I think that makes all the difference.
00:36:06.380So, yeah, that gives me a lot of hope. Yeah, I have hope. I feel good. I feel good about the
00:36:11.920future. The children are the future. Let them lead the way. And so I'm so psyched about everything
00:36:17.680you're doing. Tell everyone again where they can find you and where they can get involved.
00:36:21.720Great. So our website is joinmama.org. We are on social media and we realize the irony of that.
00:36:29.780So do I, man. So do freaking I. But you know what? That's where eyeballs are. And like I said, I don't want to shut this whole thing down. I just want it to be more regulated and for us to be cognizant of it. Same way, I don't think we should take away alcohol from people. I like a margarita.
00:36:42.740Yeah, no, I agree. But, you know, alcohol is a good example. Like, we don't let kids use alcohol because it's addictive and has health problems. Like, why don't we let kids use something we know is unsafe? So mama's working hard to make sure social media becomes safer for kids, to make sure that parents understand the benefits of delaying. And if you visit us at joinmama.org or if you go to any of our socials, and our socials are at WeAreMama, and you can find us there. So, so good to talk to you, Jo. Thanks for having me.
00:37:10.980talking to you. I love talking to you. This was wonderful.