Expert Commission: The digital world must be child-friendly

• 06/24/2026

After 9 months of intensive work, the expert commission on ‘Protecting Children and Young People in the Digital World’ today presented its recommendations to Federal Minister for Youth Karin Prien. On 4 September 2025, she had appointed eighteen experts from various professions and mandated them to develop a strategy for the protection of young people online, including specific recommendations for action for various stakeholders such as the federal government, the Länder (federal states) and civil society. Among other things, the expert commission was tasked with examining the necessary conditions for a safe digital environment for children and young people, the health implications of media consumption, the promotion of media literacy among children, young people, parents and professionals, and the impact of artificial intelligence.

The federal states were also involved in the commission´s working process through a federal state advisory council. Similarly, the Independent Federal Commissioner against Child Sexual Abuse (UBSKM), the Federal Government Commissioner for Addiction and Drug Issues, and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media took part in the expert commission’s deliberations as observers. Other stakeholders were also given the opportunity to present their views and perspectives in submissions during five public hearings. Children and young people were also able to contribute their ideas, suggestions and opinions in workshops organised nationwide by the Digitale Chancen Foundation.

Following its deliberations, the Federal Government’s expert commission recommends 56 measures that are tailored to the developmental stages of young people and assign responsibilities to the relevant stakeholders. When presenting the recommendations for action, Prof. Dr Olaf Köller, co-chair of the commission, emphasised that “it is not the child who must adapt to the digital world, but the digital world that must adapt to the child”. The aim is to take children’s rights, needs and abilities as the benchmark in order to create safe spaces and enable participation. Nadine Schön, co-chair of the expert commission, went on to explain that children’s rights to protection, provision and participation must all be given equal weight. Accordingly, imparting knowledge, providing guidance and offering reliable support should help to empower young people to navigate the digital environment. To this end, it is necessary to teach the relevant skills in schools, train specialist staff and support peer-to-peer approaches. Similarly, social media services must fulfil their responsibility to protect children and young people and ensure safe digital spaces. Risk-based approaches and guidelines for the safe design of services (‘safety-by-design’) should ensure that age-appropriate environments are available for young people. To enable participation, child-friendly services and safe spaces for experimentation and try something out should be made available. Counselling and support services, as well as an online children’s police station, are intended to help provide young people in critical situations with opportunities to report incidents to the police, make complaints and receive support.

With regard to a possible age limit for the usage of social media, the expert commission can envisage two possible approaches. For instance, policymakers could decide that social media services should, as a general rule, only be made available to young people aged 13 and over. This minimum age should be verified in a reliable, secure and data-protection-compliant manner – preferably using the European digital wallet (EUDI wallet), which will be available from 2027. According to Minister Prien, the government has already laid the foundations for younger teenagers to use these services as well. Alternatively, a decision could be made in favour of a risk-based approach, whereby specific features of the services would be subject to specific age limits and providers would be subject to stricter platform oversight. For both options, the expert commission recommends not pursuing a national approach for the time being in favour of a European agreement, and avoiding a general national ban. For so-called AI companions the expert commission proposes, as an immediate measure, the introduction of a minimum age of 13. For schools, it is suggested that the use of private devices be prohibited up to and including the seventh school year. From the eighth school year onwards, it is proposed that usage policies be developed in consultation with the pupils.

Federal Minister for Youth Karin Prien gratefully received the report from the expert commission and cited, by way of example from the list of recommended measures, those which she believes can be implemented in the near future. Accordingly, she wishes to enshrine media education for children in family law and reform it within the context of parental responsibility in the Civil Code (Sections 1631 and 1626). She believes schools have a responsibility to prepare young people for the digital environment at an early stage, with media literacy and democracy education being considered in tandem. She also wishes to advocate for the guidelines set out in Article 28(4) of the Digital Services Act (DSA) to be made mandatory for platform providers, and for reporting procedures to be made simpler and more transparent for children. She also advocates for Europe-wide harmonisation regarding any age limit that may be introduced. Should agreements and their implementation not be reached promptly at European Union level, Prien says she could envisage Germany taking unilateral action to ensure greater protection for children and young people.

The 56 recommendations for action are listed below. These can be found in the report by the Expert Commission Entwicklung stärken, Verantwortung übernehmen. Für ein gutes Aufwachsen von Kindern und Jugendlichen in der digitalen Welt (Strengthening Development, Taking Responsibility: For Children and Young People to Thrive in the Digital World), alongside the relevant problem descriptions and intended outcomes. The report is available in German only.

1. Launch the national information campaign ‘We’re here for our children’
2. Provide reliable advice and support to families before the birth and during the first few months of their child’s life
3. Expand, strengthen and raise the profile of local centres offering media literacy programmes
4. Raise awareness amongst parents and families about the responsible use of images of children and young people online
5. Develop inclusive parenting advice and education: practical for everyday life, multilingual and easily accessible
6. Facilitate discussion amongst parents on media education – sustain effective projects
7. Establish a legal framework for parental media education under family law (Section 1631 of the German Civil Code (BGB), Section 1626 of the German Civil Code (BGB))
8. Make media education a compulsory component of the initial and continuing training of early years education professionals
9. Establish media education as a compulsory component of degree programmes and training courses in education and social work
10. Strengthen digital education in primary schools – utilise general studies lessons and after-school sessions
11. Strengthening children’s self-regulation skills within the family, in childcare settings and at school
12. ‘AI Seahorse’ – promoting a basic understanding of AI (Note: In Germany, proof of basic swimming ability is known as the ‘Seahorse’. This very common term for a basic skill is being applied here to the field of AI.)
13. Promoting algorithmic and AI literacy in an educational context
14. Train a designated contact person with expertise in media education to deal with pupils’ media-related concerns
15. Strengthen media literacy in lower and upper secondary education through peer-to-peer programmes
16. Regulate the private use of digital devices in schools
17. Media education and prevention from the outset: harnessing the potential of early intervention and childcare centres
18. Promote analogue alternatives for leisure activities and voluntary work
19. Combining media literacy and democracy education
20. Create safe spaces for young people to recognise online phenomena and develop strategies for dealing with them
21. Centralise and make accessible age- and capabilities-appropriate approaches to promoting media and digital literacy
22. Strengthen the promotion of media literacy within the framework of educational child and youth protection
23. Expand media literacy in schools by strengthening school social work
24. Make the application of age ratings for games more flexible, including within youth support services
25. Develop a tiered prevention system with more tailored support for vulnerable children and young people
26. Introduce uniform standards for the diagnosis and treatment of behavioural addictions and addiction-like behaviour
27. Expand a tiered approach to universal, selective and targeted prevention measures against excessive use and addiction
28. Integrate media education and health
29. Strengthen support services for children and young people and make them accessible
30. Provide easy access to medical and psychological support for digital-related stress
31. Strengthen digital policing
32. Set up a ‘Children’s Online Police Station’ – a nationwide reporting centre for security authorities dealing with cases involving minors
33. Consistently combat depictions of sexualised violence
34. Combating digital sex offences through police operations involving alleged children
35. Develop standardised criteria and data-sharing practices for depictions of sexual violence
36. Regulate on the basis of risk and design – two alternatives: a statutory minimum age limit (13 years) and service-specific age limits
37. Secure and age-appropriate default settings and design requirements for young people’s accounts – implementing youth protection ‘by design’ and ‘by default’
38. Establish binding regulations for effective and data-protection-compliant age verification whilst safeguarding fundamental rights
39. Ensure users have greater control over recommendation systems and content
40. Closing existing gaps in protection under the DSA: Amending the rules for small and micro-enterprises
41. Protecting children’s privacy – warnings from service providers regarding the uploading of children’s photos
42. Ensuring public bodies handle children’s images responsibly
43. Children’s and family influencing: empowering parents in their duty of care, establishing binding framework conditions
44. Extend the scope of the risks associated with using AI in the JuSchG and JMStV
45. Improve protection against abusive deepfakes and deepnudes
46. Risks posed by AI companions: introduce an age limit as an immediate measure
47. Expand and further develop child-friendly online services
48. Develop child-friendly AI as part of the EU’s digital sovereignty
49. Develop an industry standard for toys: ‘Child-safe AI’ with an accompanying information campaign
50. Create incentives for trustworthy European platform and data infrastructures
51. Conduct a scientific review of policy proposals regarding DSA liability
52. Promote research into how children and young people engage with media
53. Launch a research initiative into the mechanisms of impact of social media and AI applications
54. Establish organised participation of children and young people in digital child and youth protection
55. Set up and maintain an interdisciplinary panel of experts to analyse and assess current developments in the protection of children and young people in the media
56. From knowledge to action: Launch an implementation strategy for the digital protection of children and young people