How the Organization for Social Media Safety is driving real change through education, policy, and technology.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Marc Berkman, CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety, about how his team is addressing online harms through a four-pronged approach: education, research, advocacy, and real-time tech solutions. Born out of a tragic viral incident, the organization now leads national efforts to make social platforms safer for everyone.
About Marc Berkman
Marc serves as the CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety, which he has grown into a prominent national consumer protection organization that has taught social media safety skills to thousands of students, parents, and educators across the country and developed essential social media safety legislation like Jordan’s Law, the nation’s first law to deter social media-motivated violence.
About Organization for Social Media Safety
The Organization for Social Media Safety is the first nonprofit consumer protection organization that focuses exclusively on social media. Through education, advocacy, and technology development, we work to make social media safe for everyone. Our mission is to protect against all social media-related dangers including cyberbullying, depression, human trafficking, substance abuse, violence, and more. We provide student assemblies, parent workshops, and consulting services to K-12 schools across the United States.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on BR Guest to apply. All right, today I have Mark Berkman on the line, and he’s CEO of the organization for social media safety, and this episode is part of our Milken Global Conference coverage series where we bring to you.
The best of individuals that attended the conference the VIPs the panelists, the speakers, you name it, all things surrounding the Milken Global Conference. Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Adam. Alright, mark. So we got a lots to talk about today. Of course, I wanna learn more and bring this content to my audience about the organization for social media safety, why it was created its mandate, what it’s doing to make social media safer for the public.
So we’re gonna get into all of that and more. But before we do I do wanna give a nod to the Milken Global Conference. That’s one of my favorite conferences of the year. I like to call it my Super Bowl conferences. I, I don’t miss. A year. We’ve been covering it now for three or four years in a row, and already on the calendar for next year.
I already know. So I’m just curious, your connection, if you’ve been to the conference in the past or what you like about it. I mean, just talk about the conference in general, please. Yeah, I mean, the, Milken conference is such an incredible event. The Milken Foundation. It is just doing really globally impactful work.
We’ve been able to collaborate with them in the past as well. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to attend over the past few years ’cause I have friends, former colleagues who are on staff at the foundation there, and very generously donate their staff tickets. To me. So I’ve been able to attend really some incredible sessions and we’ve been able to for the organization, make some incredible contacts and partnerships like the Alexandra Gucci Foundation.
We usually met at the conference just while we were there, and they’ve, been some great supporters. So it’s really. Been a wonderful experience for me, for our organization, and we’re very grateful that we’ve had the privilege to attend for the last few years. That’s great. thank you for that.
And one of my reasons in asking that question is I want more people to come, I mean, year over year. This, con, not that they need my help, but this conference is growing year over year and it’s interesting to see like the community that has really of. And that comes around, you know, once a year everybody’s normally busy running around doing their thing, and once a year people come together and convene here.
It’s it’s a really special place. So appreciate that. You sharing your experience, mark, but switching it up a bit here, I do wanna to talk a little bit more about your organization as well. So let’s get into it. So organization for Social Media Safety. So I guess let’s just start at the beginning, like, how and why was it founded?
Yeah. So. Back in 2016, 14-year-old Jordan Ner was at a fast food restaurant with some friends after school. Very typical scenario when another teen he did not know, walked up behind him and punched him in the head as hard as he could while associates of this attacker filmed it. They put it on social media where it went viral.
Mm-hmm. And I happened to have been at the time serving as the chief of staff for a California State Assembly member. And this video ended up in my inbox within a few hours of its happening, which is actually very typical of, these types of videos on social media. Hmm. I connected with the victim here, Jordan’s father, ed Ner, shortly after this attack.
And we both realized that this wasn’t an isolated incident and we both wanted to do something about it. So my office did some research and it turns out that. What we now call social media motivated violence or attacks committed for the purpose of filming them to get those likes, those shares, those views, or what our teens today would call clout.
Those videos were doubling every year since the birth of major social media around 2006. And you fast forward to then. 2016, we could find thousands of them. And so we ended up drafting some legislation called Jordan’s Law that passed in California. It’s now law first in the nation legislation to deter social media motivated violence.
But while we were doing that, we realized there were a lot more harms. That were either cost or made worse through social media, and we felt a real need to found the organization for social media safety. So we did just that. We’re now the, first and leading consumer protection organization focused exclusively on social media.
And so our mission is to protect against all the harms and dangers either caused or exacerbated through social media use. Now that sounds, I mean, that sounds like a, that’s a huge mandate and obviously very, very important. I’m just curious on how, organization is working, like what it’s doing on the day to day to, you know, hopefully make social media safer for the public.
Yeah, so we employ a really classic consumer protection model and, mm-hmm in, plain language. What that means is that we have four departments working to make families safer from these social media related threats globally. We do education work. So we are in K through 12 schools across the United States, teaching students, parents and educators, essential social media safety skills.
We leverage that national on the ground footprint with our education, work into our research work. So we have an ongoing partnership with UCLA School of Education where we conduct cutting edge research on social media safety questions. Some of them very basic questions that still have not been answered, but really essential for families and educators to know the answers to.
So we do the education research and then we do advocacy. So from congress. To Sacramento to local school boards. We are working in a nonpartisan way to improve public policy around social media safety. And then finally, we work on technology, so software and apps that provide real time protection against any and all social media related threats.
Hmm. So interesting. ’cause it’s such a big, I mean, when you talk about doing something globally, what does it look, what does it take to, I see the structure and of course I, see what you mean in terms of very traditional consumer protection. I’m just curious, like from your vantage, but what does it take to create, I mean, this essentially is it, would you call it like global coalition?
Like you’re, you’re doing such a. Big market that you’re aiming to, and there’s so many variables. I’m just trying to wrap my head around what it looks like to even make a dent in that. what does it take to kind of pull this off? What we realized early on is that we needed all of these four departments working together.
They enhance each other. But a big part of this and, it’s helpful that you started with our origin story, right? A big part of this is really, it’s a mile wide, not necessarily a mile deep. It is about diving down and understanding these harms as they emerge and evolve with this changing technology.
And so social media motivated violence was a harm that was impacting, and we see this by the research numbers now. It’s impacting millions of students. Mm-hmm. Of teens and tweens. Across the country and and globally as well. It did not have a name. It had no law protecting the public against it. No one was educating students on it.
And so that ability for us to create this infrastructure where we’re not only putting out programming, but we’re also constantly bringing in information on these evolving harms. And understanding them and learning how to put programming back out. That is our essentially theory of change of how we impact millions very efficiently.
And so with our learnings, we’re able to put out really new, impactful, innovative curriculum. Our research drives that as well. Those learnings allow me to sit with senators in Congress and develop and fine tune legislation that has massive impact. And it’s also kind of, those ideas are borrowed globally as well.
And then the tech with, again, all this information that we get across the country. I sit with CEOs of safety software companies, my team does and we’re able to have dialogue back and forth and help improve those products and then in turn, make sure that the public is aware of them. And so all these together we can very efficiently impact literally millions at sense on the, on the dollar here per live saved.
Mm. that’s absolutely amazing. and I can see the need and it’s, interesting to see how do people get involved with this? Because I feel like people are gonna listen to this. They’re gonna hear it. Like, what kind of things are needed, like resources or otherwise volunteering grants.
how do people get involved? Because I’m sure this is a hot topic that people wanna support. Yeah. Wonderful question. Appreciate it. Grants and financial resources are always the big constraint. We certainly, mm-hmm. Need, more staff handling this very important issue, as you noted.
We have programs in the pipeline that will have major global impact that we’re just waiting for some resources on. So that’s a big one. Schools our ability to get into schools to share our lifesaving curriculum with students. We just need schools to open the door on that. So warm introductions to principals and superintendents and school counselors in K through 12 schools across the country.
Now, all of this information, all of our work is available on our website, social media safety.org. There is also a free course there for parents to learn how to keep their own children safe on social media as well. It’s amazing. Mark, this has been great today having you on the show and learning more about your mandate.
And really, I just to be upfront, I didn’t know that the organization existed prior to kind of researching and looking into the work for this interview. And I feel like there’s many others that don’t, that didn’t know as well, but the organization for social media. The important, I feel like as, as we become more and more connected, you know, dealing with different cultures, just different ideologies, like it’s gonna be more and more important going forward.
So I appreciate all the hard work you guys are doing. One more time just because maybe some people are driving in the gym, otherwise, how do people follow up? Because I definitely want people to connect and to visit the website or otherwise. So, one more time please. Yes. Our website is social media safety.org.
Mm-hmm. We’re also on all the major social media platforms. We do use the platforms for good. Mm-hmm. So you can find us there as well, but social media safety.org is where you can get all of our information. Perfect. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put those links in the show notes so that you can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day are bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Mark, thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you for having me, Adam.
