Germany's Federal Family Minister Karin Prien (CDU) has urged parents to take greater responsibility when it comes to managing their children's exposure to smartphones and tablets. In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, Prien said it should become a societal standard for children under the age of three to have no contact with digital devices at all. She added that legislative measures to support this goal could at least be considered.
Prien drew a comparison to existing parental obligations under the German Civil Code, such as the legal requirement for non-violent parenting. While she stressed that the state should not be dictating what happens in children's bedrooms, she insisted that parents need to be told far more clearly about the consequences their own behaviour has on their children's development. She pointed out that the negative effects stem not only from children spending too much time in front of screens but also from parents doing the same.
Through the planned Daycare Quality Development Act, Prien intends to ensure that all children are assessed for their language skills and general development around the time of their fourth birthday. She noted a growing number of developmental delays among children, not just in language but also in social and emotional areas. Children identified as needing additional support should receive targeted intervention, particularly in the year before they start school.
Prien described these early childhood measures as a genuine game changer for the education system. However, she made clear that the decision on whether to introduce a compulsory final year of daycare before school entry should remain with individual federal states.
Some states, she noted, already mandate a compulsory daycare year while others have opted for an earlier start to formal schooling. She said the federal government should not be prescribing the specifics to the states.
According to Prien, she is also working alongside the federal states to significantly improve outcomes in school education. The key priority is a renewed focus on fundamental skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. She also outlined plans to regularly measure student performance using data-driven assessments. Germany, she warned, cannot afford a situation where roughly a quarter of its children finish primary school without being able to read properly.
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