Protecting children in the age of AI.
Mathias Habib Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to educating children, parents and schools about the psychological risks of AI, and offering young people the real-world practices that anchor a developing mind.
Built on what we believe
The Challenge
Adolescents are engaging with AI and social media in unsupervised, psychologically unsafe ways. Many turn to these systems for guidance on identity and emotions, without understanding the depth of their influence.
These technologies respond to the most profound human questions with absolute certainty and no human judgment. Yet families and educational institutions are largely unprepared to help young people navigate them safely. The consequences can be irreversible.
Mission
Education & Awareness. We educate adolescents, families and schools on the psychological risks of AI and social media, building the awareness to recognise the threat and the tools to navigate it responsibly.
Real-World Practices. We reconnect young people with the physical world through photography, painting, music, hiking, camping, and cinema, anchoring them in creativity, movement, and human connection.
Research, Advocacy & Policy. From our Geneva seat, we will conduct original research and convert lessons learned into policy engagement.
Vision
A generation that grows up alongside powerful technology without being shaped by it. Young people informed enough to recognise the risks, resilient enough to resist them, and rooted in the real world through the things that make life worth living.
A machine designed to be agreeable, tireless, and infinitely patient is not a companion. It is a risk.
Three pillars. One purpose.
Awareness without an alternative is just alarm. The Foundation works across three fronts: educating those who shape adolescent life, offering real-world activities that anchor young people in the physical world, and building the research and policy that turn lessons learned into change at scale.
Awareness & Education
Co-delivered with a clinical cyberpsychologist for parents, teachers, and students. Four interlocking components:
Awareness. Lectures and workshops on the psychological risks of AI and social media.
Support. We identify children carrying the largest questions (about purpose, identity, and the future) through teacher referral, parent referral, or the baseline student survey, and connect them, in partnership with religious institutions, with qualified clergy from their own tradition. The same applies for philosophical questions. We recognise; we route.
Measurement. Every program cohort is measured before and after.
Collaboration. We will partner with organisations working in this field as the network forms.
Practices & Connection
We give adolescents real connections through hands-on, offline activities. Each one builds a different anchor in the physical world: real friendship, time in nature, hands-on skills, physical activities.
- Photography · digital and film
- Painting and visual practice
- Music · guitar lessons
- Hiking and weekend camping
- Cinema club and film analysis
- Videography and storytelling
Research, Advocacy & Policy
We partner with universities to conduct research into the harms new technology is doing to children, and we advocate for psychology curricula to evolve so the next generation of clinicians is trained to recognise and respond to those harms from the start.
- Research partnerships with universities on AI-related harms to children
- Advocacy for psychology curriculum reform, equipping future clinicians on the new digital harms
- Publication of the resulting research in peer-reviewed scientific journals, for the benefit of the field worldwide
"Elements of the Flourishing Mind"... each brushstroke, a different way of being alive in the physical world.
2010 – 2026
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Our work is carried by the people around it: volunteers who give their time, and friends who stand with its mission in awareness, activities, and research.
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