Media Addiction & Kids: Harms...and Help

For our February Expert Insights event, Dr. Jim Winston Jr., an expert on addiction and adolescence, and Emily Cherkin, known as The Screentime Consultant, join MAMA founder Julie Scelfo for a discussion about how media addiction affects the developing brains of children and teens. In this important discussion, learn about specific harms of excessive screentime and specific steps you can take at home and in your community to protect child health.

Please join us for this important Zoom discussion on Thursday, February 6, at 4pm PT/7pm ET. Get your ticket today!

A former middle school English teacher and parent of two, Emily Cherkin, M.Ed., is today known as The Screentime Consultant, who shares her tech-intentional™ approach with parents, educators and more. She is also a co-founder of The Student Data Privacy Project, a group dedicated to protecting children’s data and privacy in schools. Emily’s work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, the BBC, Good Morning America, and more. She has also been a guest lecturer at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Policy, and quoted by Chuck Norris. Emily's book is an Amazon bestseller and available everywhere books are sold.

Dr. Jim Winston Jr., a psychologist and expert in addiction, is the founder of the Winston Family Initiative in Technology and Adolescent Brain Development (or WiFi), a coalition of psychologists, educators, advocates, and neuroscience experts working to ensure healthy childhood development. Through research-based solutions, WiFi is working to tackle teens’ addiction to “digital drugs” — smartphones — and address the potentially harmful effects of excessive device use on today’s youth. Dr. Winston holds a B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a Masters of Letters from the University of Oxford. He began his career working with a drug program at a Federal Correctional Institution before moving to Florida to serve as the clinical supervisor of an adolescent sex offender treatment program run by the University of Miami. In addition to his private practice, Dr. Winston is passionate about using science-based education to highlight the effects of digital technology on people, and adolescents in particular. He is also the father of two teenage boys. 

Addictive design and the absence of tech company accountability are harming kids and families — but it doesn't have to be this way.

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

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