Bring the Friction Back: Stephen Balkam on Kids, Social Media, and Tech’s Big Tobacco Moment
Keen On America
Dystopian toys and human connection
Balkam warns against AI toys like Grok that replace human interaction and undermine childhood development.
“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? In what the Financial Times called a landmark case, Facebook (Meta) and YouTube (Google) have been found guilty of designing their products to be addictive to kids. Is this a big tobacco moment? the tut-tutting New York Times asked. In contrast, the free market Wall Street Journal called it a shakedown.
So what to make of this decision to make social media a narcotic? Stephen Balkam — founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), amongst Washington’s most credible nonpartisan voices on kids and technology, has been on the front lines of this fight for nearly thirty years. Calling himself a radical moderate, he sees good and bad in social media. He even expelled Meta from FOSI three years ago for what he calls conduct contrary to the institute’s mission.
Balkam’s sharpest disagreement is with Jonathan Haidt, amongst the shrillest voices arguing in favor of a social media ban for kids. He “violently agrees” with Haidt on the idea of a free-range childhood — giving kids more freedom outdoors. But the evidence Haidt uses to justify banning social media confuses correlation with causation, a basic research error that, Balkam insists, academic researchers have called out. Balkam thinks the real anxious generation isn’t the kids — it’s us, the paranoid parents, projecting our mostly irrational fears onto our children.
His deeper argument is in favor of friction. Silicon Valley has spent thirty years removing friction from ordering pizza, hailing cabs, and dating. Balkam argues we need to design it back into childhood — the friction of developing friendships, building resilience, learning to think critically instead of outsourcing cognition to ChatGPT at midnight. Bring the human friction of life back, Balkam argues. It’s the most effective antidote to the drug of online existence.
Five Takeaways
• Yesterday Was Tech’s Big Tobacco Moment — Sort Of: Meta and Google found liable for harm to children’s mental health. Balkam sees strong parallels to the tobacco cases of the nineties but resists the lazy comparison. The repercussions will extend beyond social media to AI. The hundreds of trials still to come will shape the next decade of tech regulation.
• Congress Gets a D-Minus: America is the last advanced country without a national privacy framework. COPPA dates to the late nineties. KOSA never passed. The result is a splintering of state-level laws and no coherent federal approach. Meanwhile, parents are overwhelmed, and the tech companies retrofitted safety features years after the damage was done.
• Jonathan Haidt Got the Free-Range Part Right. The Rest Is Shaky: Balkam “violently agrees” with Haidt on giving kids more freedom outdoors. But the evidence Haidt uses for his social media bans confuses correlation with causation — a basic research error. Academic researchers violently disagree with him. His book directly caused Australia’s social media ban. Balkam thinks we — the parents — are the anxious generation, not the kids.
• 42% of Teens Talk About Their Feelings with AI Chatbots: 60% say they feel safe using AI. 44% say some of its behaviours freak them out. They’re using it for homework, for loneliness, for practical advice, for asking how to invite someone to prom. And they’re worried about their job prospects. The three waves of concern: content in the nineties, behaviour in the 2000s, emotional attachment and cognitive outsourcing now.
• Bring the Friction Back: Silicon Valley has spent thirty years removing friction from ordering pizza, hailing cabs, and dating. Balkam argues we need to design friction back into childhood — the friction of developing friendships, building resilience, learning to think critically. A plush AI toy called Grok is being marketed to three-year-olds. It’s always there, always positive, always frictionless. That’s the dystopia.
About the Guest
Stephen Balkam is the founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), a nonpartisan organisation dedicated to making the online world safer for kids and families. FOSI’s members include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other leading technology companies. Balkam is based in Washington DC and will teach an MA course on online safety at Georgetown University in 2027.
References:
• Family Online Safety Institute — FOSI’s research, policy work, and resources for parents.
• Episode 2849: How Stories Can Save Us — Colum McCann on Narrative Four. Social media promised storytelling. It delivered isolation.
• Episode 2846: How to Be Agreeably Disagreeable — Julia Minson on disagreeing better. Balkam’s friction argument is the parenting version.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Chapters:
- (00:31) - Introduction: Meta and Google found liable for harm to children
- (03:23) - Big tobacco or something different?
- (04:29) - Julia Angwin: should big tech pay us?
- (06:23) - FOSI and the radical moderate
- (07:25) - Congress gets a D-minus: no federal privacy bill
- (09:34) - Safety by design vs. retrofitting parental controls
- (09:49) - Why FOSI expelled Meta — and Twitter
- (12:38) - The pendulum from optimism to paranoia
- (14:48) - Jonathan Haidt: brilliant on free-range kids, wrong on the evidence
- (18:05) - Australia’s ban vs. Greystones, Ireland: local solutions work
- (22:20) - Trump’s tech panel: Zuckerberg and Andreessen
- (24:19) - Melania and the robot: the optics of grift
- (26:54) - 42% of teens talk about their feelings with AI chatbots
- (31:22) - Bring the friction back: critical thinking vs. ChatGPT at midnight
- (35:25) - Grok: the AI plush toy marketed to three-year-olds
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