“Friction is what brings us together. If we were never able to communicate in real space, we would not truly learn what it is to be human.” — Stephen Balkam

Is social media a drug? Facebook and YouTube found guilty of designing addictive products for kids. Stephen Balkam — founder of FOSI, who expelled Meta three years ago — calls himself a radical moderate. He’s been in this fight for thirty years.
His sharpest disagreement is with Jonathan Haidt. Free-range kids: yes. Social media bans based on shaky evidence: no. Correlation is not causation. Balkam thinks the real anxious generation is us, the paranoid parents. Jung would have recognised it.
His deeper argument is in favor of friction. Silicon Valley removed it from pizza and dating. Balkam wants it designed back into childhood — friendships, resilience, critical thinking. Bring the human friction of life back. It’s the most effective antidote to the drug of online existence.

Takeaways
• Tech’s Big Tobacco Moment. Meta and Google liable. Hundreds of trials to come. The repercussions extend to AI.
• Congress Gets a D-Minus. No federal privacy bill. COPPA dates to the nineties. Parents are overwhelmed.
• Haidt Got the Free-Range Part Right. The evidence for bans confuses correlation with causation. We’re the anxious generation, not the kids.
• 42% of Teens Talk to AI Chatbots About Their Feelings. They’re using it for homework, loneliness, and prom advice. And worrying about jobs.
• Bring the Friction Back. Grok the plush toy. Always positive, always there. That’s the dystopia.

About the Guest
Stephen Balkam is the founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute. He’s based in Washington DC.

References
FOSI: https://www.fosi.org

About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: Meta and Google found liable for harm to children
00:03:23 Big tobacco or something different?
00:04:29 Julia Angwin: should big tech pay us?
00:06:23 FOSI and the radical moderate
00:07:25 Congress gets a D-minus: no federal privacy bill
00:09:34 Safety by design vs. retrofitting parental controls
00:09:49 Why FOSI expelled Meta — and Twitter
00:12:38 The pendulum from optimism to paranoia
00:14:48 Jonathan Haidt: brilliant on free-range kids, wrong on the evidence
00:18:05 Australia’s ban vs. Greystones, Ireland: local solutions work
00:22:20 Trump’s tech panel: Zuckerberg and Andreessen
00:24:19 Melania and the robot: the optics of grift
00:26:54 42% of teens talk about their feelings with AI chatbots
00:31:22 Bring the friction back: critical thinking vs. ChatGPT at midnight
00:35:25 Grok: the AI plush toy marketed to three-year-olds