Internet Safety: Interview with Stephen Balkam

Stephen Balkam, founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), is interviewed by Mary Karapetian Alvord, PhD, 2013 President of APA Div. 46, Society for Media Psychology and Technology. 

FOSI is an international organization with the mission "to make the online world safer for kids and their families". In the following three videos, Balkam and Alvord discuss media literacy, internet safety and generational understandings of technology.

The questions put to Balkam are: 

1. One of the Family Online Safety Institute's stated purposes is to promote solutions and policies for online safety. In that context, what population do you see as the most vulnerable developmentally and for what reason?
2. When you approach online safety, how do you bridge the gap between generational understandings of technology, i.e. perceptions of use, normality and purpose?
3. How do you take the conversation from "online safety" to one that promotes the potentials in technology and networked access?
4. How do you redirect a focus from online problems to digital citizenship? Does concern for the risks interfere with more positive online use and behaviors?
5. Is there a danger that parents become too focused on 'dangers' of the Internet and technology and lose site of a broader view of parenting issues, such as boundaries, values, responsibility and citizenship?