MAMA is a grassroots movement of parents and allies fighting back against media addiction and creating a world where real-life experiences and interactions remain at the heart of a healthy childhood. 

We envision a world where safeguards are in place to protect children and teens from the harms of media addiction, and kids can grow up without being relentlessly targeted by hidden algorithms and commercial messages that exploit their emotions for profit. 

In this future, face-to-face human interaction continues to occupy the center of social life, and kids have a right to experience a healthy, balanced childhood in a world where technology serves humanity — not the other way around.

Abundant research, and our own collective experience, show what’s best for children’s well-being — and it isn’t endless screentime. MAMA was founded by Julie Scelfo, veteran journalist, media ecologist, and mother of 3, to take on today’s media-obsessed culture. 

After years of reporting on youth mental health and suicide, Julie led a collective of experts and communicators in designing a platform to finally challenge the harms caused by today’s unhealthy media environment and runaway tech. The result: MAMA.

MAMA is the only organization led by a mother with a journalist’s courage to speak truth to power — and the determination to see it through.

MAMA has a three-part mission: educating parents; getting smartphones out of schools; and ensuring technology products have basic safeguards like other consumer products. 

And we work in three ways: we form local chapters that give parents a platform to band together and take collective action in their communities; we provide thought leadership with a regular presence in national and local media, and through our monthly online Expert Insights Series; and we work with community leaders and local and national policymakers to address the impacts of media addiction.