Moms band together to help kids fight social media addiction

By Kristine Sorensen

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    SEWICKLEY, Pennsylvania (KDKA) — Many people remember MADD, or Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Now a grassroots group spreading around the country is modeling itself after MADD, this time to protect kids from the harms of technology. It’s called MAMA, which stands for Mothers Against Media Addiction.

A co-founder of the Brooklyn, New York, chapter came to Sewickley to talk with members of the local group and additional parents interested in getting involved in the movement.

Technology is having a major impact on childhood: less play, shortened attention spans and dependence on devices. As kids get bigger, so do the problems. One mom from Wexford says her teenage daughter was sexually harassed online.

“It was very difficult for my daughter, and I saw how so many other people were being negatively affected by what was happening [online], whether it was bullying, sexual harassment, sextortion, passing of nude images, you name it,” she said.

Studies show 93% of kids ages 13 to 17 use social media, and more than 1 in 3 say they use it almost constantly. That makes it difficult for parents to act individually to ban social media for their kids because it’s become such a common form of social connection among teenagers.

“What we realized is it’s an unfair battle for parents. These devices are everywhere, and they’ve become socially acceptable for kids and adults to have everywhere at any time,” Colette Walsh from Sewickley said.

Jessica Elefante says change will have to come collectively. She’s a co-chair for the Brooklyn, New York, chapter of MAMA, which is fighting media addiction and promoting real-life experiences and interactions for kids.

“This is why we do the work we do. It sucks. It’s heavy. We should not have to be dealing with this. Raising kids is hard enough. We should be able to enjoy their childhood. They should be able to enjoy their childhoods,” Elefante told the group while also reading passages from her book, “Raising Hell, Living Well.”

Pittsburgh was the first chapter of Mothers Against Media Addiction outside of Brooklyn, and they’re already creating change.

Walsh and 235 families in the Sewickley area joined forces this summer to form Sewickley Unplugged. With Quaker Valley School administrators, they improved technology policies in their elementary and middle schools.

This includes implementing a policy known as “away for the day” where students face disciplinary consequences if they’re seen using a phone or smart watch in school without permission. In addition, elementary school students are no longer required to bring home their school laptops each night.

“We all have the same goals in mind, and what we realized very quickly is that there are a lot of policies and technology uses that started in COVID that no one’s really stopped to kind of reevaluate,” Walsh said.

The research is mounting on how technology can harm kids. The average teenager spends 4.8 hours a day on social media. Fifteen percent of teenagers report seeing online pornography at age 10 or younger, and 1 in 8 kids ages 13 to 15 report unwanted sexual advances on Instagram in the previous week.

Experts believe these are some of the reasons why suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for kids ages 10 to 14, and all of these reasons are why more than 200 families in the Sewickley area have signed an online pledge to wait until their child is in at least ninth grade to give them a smartphone. Some give them a flip phone until then.

The goal of the meeting in Sewickley is to motivate and empower parents to take action in their own homes and in the community when it comes to technology and kids. Elefante calls it “making good trouble.”

“Good trouble is just changing the status quo in your backyard. Go and start a community of your own,” she explained.

“What you’ll realize very quickly is that you’re not alone in your thoughts, but nobody really knows how to get it started,” Walsh said.

Valerie Walker, a parent from Beaver, said, “If there’s anything I’ve learned through my faith, it’s that we’re stronger together in numbers.”

The families at the meeting in Sewickley say it’s not too late to change the culture, and they’re not waiting for someone else to do it.

“We have to do something to save our children, and that’s just where my heart was at,” Walker said.

Mothers Against Media Addiction in New York helped change laws in the state and is currently working to try to get the Kids Online Safety Act passed through Congress. The last time Congress passed a law to protect children on the internet was in 1998 — before Instagram, TikTok or even the iPhone.

There are now 26 chapters of MAMA in 16 states, and they have 34 more chapters on a waitlist because it’s growing so fast.

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