Interview Only w/ Julie Scelfo - Inside the Movement To Save Childhood From Big Tech

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five day returns now available in Canada as well. That's qui nce dot com, slash chuck, free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns quints dot com slash chuck. Use that code so joining me today. Er of something called MAMA. That's the acronym. It is Mother's Against Media Addiction. The founder is Julia excuse me, Julie Shelfe. She's a former New York Times reporter has become a bit of

I think a media ecologist of sorts. And look, as many of you know, many of my listeners here know that trying to figure out how we rebuild trust in the information ecosystem, how can we clean up the information ecosystem? And one of the more remarkable things in this polarized environment is that what's been interesting is that the only time we can find areas of agreement is when it

is about protecting our kids online social media. And so as we try to figure out how big tech is going to build AI and will they do it safely or not? Given the experience with social media, I figured this would be a really good conversation because I want to learn more about mama. So, Julie, welcome to the podcast.

to repair and rebuild trust in all sorts of institutions? Right, sort of the information ecosystem that was sort of at the at the heart of the What's interesting about this organization that I'm working with is that it includes folks in the national security space and folks in the business space and in health and in sports, as well as news and politics. And you're tackling this from a from a youth space, and as we transition from fearing social media to fearing AI. This is I think a pretty

relevant conversation. So I want to start with what motivated you to do this? I think it's obvious in some cases, but are you pressed without quickly we actually have come

together on the issue of at least our phones and schools.

the legacy news organizations responded to it. And what was

very clear to me, what was very unfortunate is that even though journalists are really good at understanding and vetting information quality, they weren't trained in media literacy, and they didn't understand how what they publish and how what they communicated communicated. But they were communicating online and on television was helping shape the information environment. And so you know, the question about regaining trust is a big one, and I hope we can talk about it more later in

the show. But specifically for Mama, I was reporting a lot on youth mental health and suicide. And it was about a decade ago that we saw a terrible increase

in suicide rates among American adolescents, and I reported on that and it was manifestly obvious that social media was at the heart of that problem. And then, as sad as that story was, we saw suicide rates go up not just in teens, but in tweens, which your children as young as nine to ten. Now I'm a mom. I have three sons, and reporting that story really shook me to my core. When you have nine year olds, ten year old children who want to die, something is

profoundly messed up. Because I run mama. I won't use the crude language that's really in my head about that how messed up that is. But I realized something had to be done. And what has to be done is that this information environment has to be brought under control so that it's safe for children.

late on social media, but maybe this gets us there on AI.

harm content. Meta released data on it just last year, and according to Meta's own report, there were forty eight million separate pieces of suicide and self harm content on their platforms in the previous year. And that's just the pieces that they'll acknowledge. There's probably a lot more than that. So, you know, as long as we've had mass media, beginning in the nineteen thirties with radio, our government has regulated it. It has said there need to be limits, there need

to be standards. It's not censoring free speech. It's just recognizing that not all content is appropriate in all places for all audiences. I don't think we want a world. You know, if we allowed every single course vulgar X rated activity on our regular television channels and on the radio, you know what kind of world would we have. So I'm not.

Our friends at an organization called Issue one have been tracking this and they have found that the tech big tech industry has one lobbyist for every two lawmakers in Washington, and Meta alone has one lobbyist for every seven lawmakers. So you know what's happening is, even though there's wide agreement among most lawmakers and most parents and most citizens, you have big tech spending on godly and holy amounts of money and getting just a few people who are

really messing up legislation. I mean, one example is the Kids Online Safety Act, which passed last year in the Senate by a vote of ninety one to three, which like, when does that happen? And over in the House, Speaker Johnson refused to bring it for a vote. Steve Scalise says it wasn't good legislation. And nobody could understand why. And then it was announced that Meta is building a twenty eight billion dollar AI data processing plant in the

state which you know, I don't know. Does that have something to.

think we'll find out.

it does seem as if there's enough opposition. But I know you're working on this.

And for those of your listeners who aren't familiar with this, the tech industry is trying to get this sweetheart deal passed where they would pass a federal law saying there can be no state regulation of AI and this is such a profound violation of states' rights and their fundamental ability to keep their citizens safe that we had forty four I think attorneys general send a letter to the Senate when this was being considered earlier this year in

the Big Beautiful Bill, saying this is outrageous. You can't do this. Hundreds of lawmakers of both parties, so you can't do this, And it came out of the Big Beautiful Bill. Now they're trying to sneak it back into the Defense Reauthorization Act. And we're also hearing there's the possibility of an executive order. So you know, the way the draft was worded, it's so vague. It would not only for it states from regulating AI, prohibit them from

regulating social media. So nobody wants this, and it would just be a real boon to a handful of billionaires who own these companies.

I think this has been a disaster. I think it something that destroys the information ecosystem, that destroys trust, that breaks up families. This is not a successful business, and yet we want to create the same regulatory environment to

allow AI to thrive. And we think that's going to be good because of the experience with social media. And I do think this is why there's more public and there's more bipartisan pushback on this because I think if you frame the question of do you want the tech companies to have this to use this same lack of rules of the game to build AI as they build social media? Do you trust the same people that build social media to build AI? I think the answer is no.

that's not what's most important. You know, I have no problem with people making money and building a successful company, but you should not be able to do it on the backs of children. So you know, that is why Mama is working. We started, you know, hoping that we could have six chapters by the end of the first year. We were sort of inspired by mothers against drunk driving and the way they had chapters around the country. Instead, we're up to nearly forty chapters in twenty two states.

Our members are working in their homes and their communities, in their schools, and with policymakers to advance changes, just like we had to make big changes once we learned about the harms of big tobacco, saying Okay, it shouldn't be normative that we give this to young children. It shouldn't be okay that we load it full of chemicals

that can cause cancer. And we have to ensure that we're both using it in a safe way and that the manufacturers of these products are held to basic safety standards.

tech and social media products and technology in general is so embedded in our society that in order to shift how we use it, to shift how we regulate it, it's going to take change at multiple levels. So, just like with big tobacco, we need culture change. We need a lot of education so that people think about it differently. We had to go back to Hollywood, you know, whereas tobacco companies had paid them to write scripts where the

sexy leading men and women were smokers. We had to convince them to make sure that the sexy men and women leading you know, stars were not smoking. We had to get rid of Joe camel, So there had to be a lot of public education. And then there were also lawsuits, and we're seeing with organizations like the Social Media Victims Law Center and other lawmakers where they are suing these companies because the companies are claiming it's not

their fault that children are harmed. But now the courts are hearing cases where, for example, you know, and apologies to talk about a difficult subject in listeners, just like a kind of a trigger warning. But you know, I've met families whose children were sent affirmatively sent by Instagram of videos of someone hanging themselves and then their child replicated.

We had a little girl in Pennsylvania who tried the choking challenge after the platform sent it to her, and so courts are now hearing that, and that's just like what happened with Big Tomay.

of starts to think like a lawyer at times, right, And I don't understand how Section two thirty even applies that once a tech company creates an algorithm, now a publisher. If they choose not to be a publisher, then they don't have any liability. But the minute they created an algorithm, as you point out they sent the video, they are It's no different than our old newspaper editors deciding what goes what goes on the above the fold that people can see in the news box where you you still

when we're you still? Sorry for those of that don't remember this, we need to go and actually put a quarter in and get your newspaper out of a box. And when quote unquote below the fall, it's a choice,

it's an algorithm, is a choice that the tech company makes. I don't see how Section two thirty applies at all.

right to mak mediated speech. So for the last century we've had all kinds of laws and restrictions and accountability for publishers, for broadcasters, and we allow social media to come in and turn anybody and everybody into a publisher without any accountability. So, you know, in terms of your opening question about how do we get the information ecosystem back on track, I think that it's pretty simple. We have to pass some regulation that holds people accountable for

what they publish. And again, advertisers supported speech is very different than First Amendment speech, and social media is supported by advertising, so that's another legal aspect of it that I think needs to be looked at.

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more talking about what when Facebook was trying to deny any culpability during the during the Russian influence operation, and it was sort of like or you know, putting up advertisements that were totally missing misleading. When I was at Meet the Press, if we aired an ad that we knew was misleading, we as the broadcaster, shared liability with the advertiser. In fact, in some ways we were we'd be held more liable than the appier themselves. That is

not how it works on these platforms. Meta is you know, if somebody advertises on an in an Instagram with a with a misleading ad, you don't get to sue Meta for that. You only get to sue I guess the company itself if you want to do it. So there's that has to change. And I and it's one of

those where I don't understand. I don't understand. As you said, the laws that are already on the book should already be applied like this idea, they have to be you know, they carved out this separate and I think that's the mistake that was made.

it's media addiction. And you know, I started out by sort of trying to be hopeful and noting that, hey, look, the one place where politicians seem to find agreement is on this issue, like how do we protect our children? And I've been heartened by all these laws passed in the States on self abandoned schools. But do you know what a lot of schools proactively do. I proactively give an iPad to every student that comes in the classroom.

In fact, there is a movement in my neighborhood. It's a very small movement, but that's how these movements start, right neighbor to neighbor going, Hey, tell Arlington schools stop giving you know, teach out of books not iPads.

And we are now seeing the lowest reading in math scores in our lowest performing children than we've seen since the United States started measuring that back in the seventies. So there's just been a terrible decline in reading in math performance that matches up exactly to the introduction of tablets and laptops into classrooms. At MAMA, we're not anti tech. We think tech can be fun and tech can be helpful. We just don't think it should replace real life experiences

and interaction. And there's actually centuries of evidence that show embodied learning experiences are critical for memory consolidation in the mind. That's how children learn by doing so. We know that physically holding a book is affecting the mind in a much different way than looking at it on a screen. So you I have a three part mission at Mama's

Parent Education. It's getting phones out of school so children can learn, and it's demanding safeguards that our lawmakers act to ensure these products if they're going to be out there, that they're safer kids.

able to do and that to me makes sense. You want to have these smart boards. And you know, the upside about having a textbook online is that it's always up to date, it's always current, right, it's never out of it's never now of date. You can quickly without having to buy new textbooks. So there are reasons school districts want to save money, right, which is to have

some of this stuff available. What's the Is there a regulatory line we can create in legislation that says, okay, you know, we're not introducing any tech into classrooms until sixth grade? Is that? Is there enough studies to support a hard and fast line like that.

and toddler as possible. If your child's under two, they should not be exposed to a screen. If every once in a while you let your toddler talk to their grandparents on FaceTime or Skype, I don't think it's such a big deal, but nobody should be parking their infant in front of a screen for entertainment because we know it affects their brain development. And there is a researcher who's been taking scans of preschoolers and finding that the ones who had screens have actual less white matter in

their brains. In terms of whether we could make a rule, you know, we live in a country where education is decided state by state, and so every state does it differently. My recommendation, again would be to delay these things as long as possible. Now, there's a lot of parents out

there saying we have to have our kids ready to compete in a technological world. And I agree with that. But the question I always ask is, you know, if you want your child to be a safe driver, for example, And we all agree that we want our children, once they learn to drive, to be safe on the roads. But none of us think they should start learning to drive at age seven, or age eight or age nine, because their brains and their bodies are not ready for that.

And so for children, what we think is important is that the foundational skills they need to be competent learners are there before we introduce technology. And then we introduce technology in a limited way so that they can learn the skills they need, but that it doesn't overtake all of their other learning.

sort of the liberal arts right, majoring in English. In fact, you have universities dropping that as a major right that there's more specificity that students were leaning towards and his thesis,

his theory and what he was going to bet on is that in the next ten years that we were going to see a turn back to the liberal arts. And in fact, he thinks his job's going to be how to help students when they come to college. That college, that college may turn into how to learn because we're in some ways, because our kids are being raised on screens.

They know how, they know, they know where to find information, they don't know how to how to how to create the information right, they don't know how to confine the information if if the power goes out type of issue, and that that's in some ways that may be a role that undergraduate universities are going to be playing again. So that was an interesting thesis he had. What do you make of that?

You know, it's an interesting hypothesis. I think that a lot of learning, though, happens in early childhood, and there are certain foundational building blocks. We know, if by a certain age you're not reading at a certain level, it's very unlikely that you'll get there in your twenties. Right.

That is why in this country we long ago established had start in zero to three, because there was so much evidence that what happens during early childhood really affects your lifelong success in learning and even other things like your economic you know, status, your your job, you know, availability, all those kinds of things. So you know, we we're pushing to make sure. You know, Look, I'm an American.

I want us to win the AI race, but we need to make sure that these technologies are developed in ways that are all so safe and responsible. And I have every confidence that our technology leaders can do both of those things.

if you caught this in the news, but there was a Teddy Bear with AI in it that just had to be recalled because if a child asked the Teddy Bear would tell them where they could find knives matches. If you asked the teddy Bear a sex question, suddenly they lead you, and you know it would lead you into a conversation about like fringe. You know, sex spetishes like these are not products that are safe for kids, and we should not make them available to kids until we know they're safe.

rate a girl if she's.

They're giving them emotional support. They said, that's what we want character ai to do. We don't want to replace Google. We want to replace your mom and he said.

in some cases for someone to end their own life. So I think to that company's credit, they have now announced that it should not be used by anyone under eighteen. But again the question remains, why didn't they consider this

consequence when they created the product? And so again that is why, Mama, we're so focused right now in ensuring that our lawmakers take action to require these companies to be accountable for the products that they make, that there's transparency so we know what's happening at these companies, because unless you require them to provide this data, you know researchers can't even study it, and that there's responsibility and that when they design them in such a way that

it's inflicting harm on our children at scale, that they are held responsible for that. And we are seeing multiple lawsuits now from school districts throughout the country who are saying, you know what, you have to reimburse us for the tens of millions of dollars. It's costing us for therapists, for emergency psychiatric beds, for all of these costs that have been borne by Americans and our communities that are really the cause that been caused by these tech company products.

all of this stuff. And then all of a sudden we realize, oh, no, coding is not going to be a life skill. This isn't this isn't going to be something you need, and it isn't going to help you get another job. In fact, that is going to be replaced by a robot. So that's that's a that's a no longer necessary. That's like teaching somebody how to dig out an ice block. We don't. We don't refrigerate with ice blocks anymore. That is no longer an industry that

is necessary. The biggest fear I have now moving from parent to grandparent. Right, I'm not there yet, but I have. I have nieces and nephews who are having kids now, and that is they don't you, And I thought, I think we have an idea of the world our kids

are going to be living in. I think that's harder and harder to visualize, and I think it's paralyzing parents and trying to figure out what it is that they should be asking the schools to be teaching their kids to prepare them for the for for this next generation of jobs or this next generation of society, because I don't think any of us have the first clue of

what it's going to look like. And I don't know how that factors into what you're working on, but it's to me part of the of the fear factor that has allowed so much technology into the school systems.

is here. It's not going anywhere. We are going to have a lot of technology available to us, and it's going to help us solve a lot of problems. But there are many things about being human that we don't want to change, and it should always be part of being human. I don't want a robot to hold my toddler or my grand baby. I want to hold that child. And we don't think that we should just blindly say, okay,

tech is going to replace everything. We know that, and there's abundant evidence about the role of parents and adults in children's lives and about the role of embodied experiences in children's learning. And we also know that there are many, many, many jobs that technology is not good for. I don't know if you saw that video that was making its way across social media last week, but there was a

new AI robot. It was presented at a conference and as it got across the stage, you know it was it looked really cool until it fell down because they haven't even figured out balance yet. So, you know, over and over again, for more than a century, we've heard tech companies promise that their product is going to revolutionize everything, and some products do and they you know, a smartphone has changed a lot of things. Has it changed the

way we eat food? Has it changed the way we nurture our babies, has it changed the way you know, our economy has run, not exactly. There are some changes in our payments, right, but absolutely everything is not going to change. So when it comes to thinking about the future, you know, what I want for my children is to have the same thing that my grandparents wanted for their kids. It's the same thing I want for my future grandchildren. I want them to grow up healthy. I want them

to grow up confident and capable. I want them to have a set of skills so that they are resilient and can adapt. Because nobody knows exactly what the workplace is going to need, right, but we're always going to need trades, We're always going to need skilled workers, We're always going to need caretakers, and all of these professions that hold up what it means to have a society. The tech workers and the folks that the machines are

a small part of that. And I think we also just don't want to give it all over to the machines. You know, the Luddites happened because those folks like didn't want to lose their jobs. And now we're at a point where many, many more types of work can be replaced, and we have to decide is that what we want? Do we want actors to not you have jobs anymore?

Do we want everything to be robots? And I don't think we do. I don't think anybody wants to take their kindergartener to class and have them taught by a robot teacher.

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toodcast for thirty percent off. This is where I'm weirdly optimistic. You know, the human species is pretty adaptable and has survived quite a few challenges over the last few million years. I have a feeling we're not going to let ourselves be replaced by robots. I just wonder if we know we need it when we're ready to start fighting back.

not left or right, just a force. You know, we're not exactly advocating an advocacy. What are you working on in the next six months? I know in the federal level we talked a little bit about it. It's the stopping this uh AI moratorium, Ai regulatory moratorium. What are some near term activities in the States that you're working on as well? And are you going to, you know, try to do candidate questionnaires or try to do things like that or are you not in that that space just yet.

be able to go to school without phones. But some parents were worried, what about an emergency And they went and they talked to local shop owners and they said, you know, in an emergency, can my child come in and use the phone? And the store owners were like, of course, and they put little stickers in the window so the kids would even know they were welcome there. Right. So Mama works in communities, and then we also work with schools because this is a huge issue now, not

just the phones, but what people are calling ed tech, so that is the giving of tablets to kindergarteners, the giving of laptop to first graders, and all over the country we're hearing from parents that they're at war with their schools because they don't want their children to come home and have these devices. They don't want their children to have access to YouTube where they're going to be watching videos over and over, and the platform is designed

to keep them on there as long as possible. And then in terms of legislation, we are very excited about all of the lawmakers that introduce bills to try to require products to be safer. In the last legislative session, we saw close to four hundred bills introduced. There were a lot, but we've seen success in everything from bell to bell phone bands to social media warning labels pass. And we're most excited about legislation like something called the

Age Appropriate Design Code or the Kid's Code. And this is law that requires companies that make digital products to be used by children to show what's called a duty of care to children in making them safe by design. So if the if a kid's going to go on there,

then it should be designed in a safe way. And that means doing things like putting privacy settings at the highest by default, not the lowest, so that every American parent doesn't have to go in there and figure out how to make sure a stranger can't contact their child. But it's set that way from the beginning. So Nebraska and Vermont, for example, this year passed the Age Appropriate Design Code.

kind of thing. I mean, who wouldn't support that? I mean you have to ask who wouldn't support keeping kids safe?

Could I, you know, maybe this a little early my next holiday season, will I go on Mama's website and be able to see these are products that you should feel comfortable that have some tech in him, that are that are safe check.

like every continent except Antarctica. So you know, we are very grateful that we receive some funding this year from the Rockefeller Foundation, and we are primarily uh funded by individual donors and family foundations. There's a lot of folks who've come together to make this work happen, and we're growing as quickly as we can. But yes, I do think eventually that is something we would like to provide.

I heard a stat and I wonder if you guys are now a clearinghouse for some of these studies that there has not been a study around the world on social media usage or early phone usage that it hasn't mattered whether it's a rich country a poor country, It hasn't mattered what ethnicity or if it's a you know, homogeneous society or a multi ethnic society that this is it is so clear that this this tech at a young age, has been harmful hardstop.

divide where low income families. And in part it might be because childcare is so expensive.

it just becomes so unhealthy. And you know we're all media addicted, right, it's not just our children, and what we model has a huge huge impact on them.

How are you trying to influence culture in that front?

I think that more and more people in Hollywood are waking up to this, especially after the actors the sag after strike last year. You know, so many studios had sort of suggested that they just pay actors once and don't hire him again, and then they can just make an AI likeness. And I don't think anybody likes the idea of never working again, because you know, pixels can

just replace them. And then I think Pixar in the Last Toy Story movie, I think they actually had a digital device kind of be one of the negative characters. So maybe somebody over there is getting the message.