Germany's government-appointed expert commission on child protection in the digital world has recommended against imposing a blanket, across-the-board social media ban on children and young people.
Meeting on Wednesday, the panel presented two alternative approaches to Family Minister Karin Prien (CDU), who also holds the education and youth portfolio: either a statutory minimum age of 13 for social media accounts, or restrictions applied to individual platforms according to their risk profile. A "blanket high minimum age" of 15 or 16, the commission said, would fall short of what is needed.
The experts submitted a total of 56 recommendations for a comprehensive strategy to protect children and young people in the digital space. Prien signalled that she sees "fundamentally in the proposal of a statutory age limit of 13 the right path" for independent social media use. She added that effective age verification measures and safeguards for young people up to the age of 18 would need to accompany any such rule.
The commission urged Germany to avoid "national solo actions" on the issue. Instead, it called for the relevant article in the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) to be made more specific, noting that the current text "remains too general and effective age checks are lacking." The body also criticised the DSA for treating different services identically.
Prien pledged to push for a European-level solution. Should insufficient or timely progress fail to materialise at EU level, she announced she would "in parallel prepare the necessary national regulations."
The commission's wider set of proposals is built around three principles: protection, empowerment, and participation. Because the digital world is now inseparable from young people's everyday lives, the panel stressed that a "blanket exclusion" must also be prevented, and that responsibility must not be shifted onto young people themselves.
The recommendations are therefore divided by age group and directed at a range of stakeholders identified as sharing responsibility: parents and families, schools, child and youth welfare services, doctors, complaints bodies, researchers, and the platform providers themselves.
Among the specific proposals is a call to enshrine protection of children from neglect, including "digital neglect", in the German Civil Code. Parents and families should receive advice and support on digital media even before a child is born, with the guiding principle described as "screen-free until three." Doctors, the commission recommended, should incorporate media use as a topic in routine check-ups and school-entry examinations.
For schools, the commission recommends a "far-reaching restriction on private use" of smartphones. Through to and including Year 7, private use during lessons, extracurricular activities, and breaks should be "uniformly prohibited nationwide and enshrined in school legislation." The panel also proposed, by analogy with the swimming proficiency badge, a compulsory "AI Seahorse" — an online-obtainable, child-friendly certificate covering the possibilities and dangers of using artificial intelligence.
"Locking children and young people out of the digital world is not protection," said commission co-chair Olaf Köller. He identified three priorities as essential: "protecting children and young people from what they are not yet equipped to handle, empowering them to take their digital lives into their own hands, and enabling the participation to which they have a right."
Co-chair Nadine Schön added that the digital world must align itself with the rights, needs, and developmental opportunities of children and young people. "Not the other way around," she said.
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