Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. I'm Mina B, and I'm a licensed social worker, mental health educator, and author of owning our struggles. I'll be chatting with experts, wellness advocates,

and others about the power of community care in improving your mental health. We'll delve

into topics such as friendships, managing difficult relationships, and most importantly,

how to cultivate belonging and support in our lives. Now, let's jump into today's

episode. Julie Shelfo is the founder and executive director of Get Media Savvy,

a nonprofit using pop culture to establish a healthy media environment for kids and families.

She is an award-winning journalist, a former New York Times staff writer, a media ecologist, an author, and a parent.

Shelfo was moved to start Get Media Savvy after reporting on the youth mental health crisis

and seeing suicidality affect children at ever younger ages,

and recognizing how a multitude of factors,

including absent regulations and the lack of widespread media literacy,

has created an unhealthy, unsafe media environment.

Now, her coalition works to create a widespread cultural shift so that everyone

recognizes the existence of the media environment and its central role in human affairs. Hi, Julie. Welcome to the show.

Good morning. Meena. It's so great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Of course. Thank you for just being a part of the show today. I'm really excited to chat with you because I think in our current climate being a really digitally focused society that we're in, I think this is a wonderful conversation for users, people who engage in the internet, as well as parents. So I know you're the founder and executive

director of Get Media Savvy. Can you tell us about what that is and what made you start this initiative?

Absolutely. So Get Media Savvy is an organization that's working to fight media chaos and build a healthier media environment

for kids and families. And the reason I was moved to sort of convene this coalition of people

to work together was because after many years of reporting on mental health and in particular youth mental health,

I reported basically the worst story I had ever worked on in my career, which was about growing

rates of tween suicide. We are now at a situation in the United States where the number

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