German Family Minister Karin Prien has called for a legal minimum age of 13 for the independent use of social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, saying she believed this was "fundamentally the right approach."
The conservative politician said on Wednesday the measure should be regulated at the European level.
"In the event that insufficient or insufficiently timely progress is made at the European level, I will in parallel prepare the necessary national regulations," she said.
A "statutory permission requirement" would allow children under 13 to use platforms that are "demonstrably child-appropriate and low-risk."
The age limit should be accompanied by effective age verification, Prien said, adding that graduated safeguards should apply to teenagers between 13 and 18.
Commission makes 56 recommendations
Prien was referring to a recommendation by the expert commission on "Child and Youth Protection in the Digital World," which she appointed. The backdrop is concern about health risks for children and teenagers - both from content such as pornography, hate speech and bullying, and from excessive usage times.
The expert commission said around 300,000 young people showed addictive behaviour.
The 18 experts had been deliberating since September and have now presented the minister with 56 recommendations. However, they were unable to reach agreement on the question of usage restrictions for children or young people.
Split on age limits
Instead, the report sets out two alternatives. The first is Prien's preferred option - a "statutory minimum age of 13" and "graduated protection standards" for the 13-to-18 age group. "Risky functions should be deactivated by default," it states.
The second option proposes abandoning "a uniform statutory age limit." Instead, the Digital Services Act should be supplemented at EU level with a binding rule "whereby accounts, services or individual functions are restricted for certain age groups where they pose particular risks in terms of impact or use," the expert report said.
The age limit applicable in each individual case should be determined by the risk assessment of the relevant service, it added.
Other countries have stricter rules
Prien's preferred solution amounts to a relatively soft restriction by international standards - applying only to children and allowing for exceptions.
Australia, by contrast, has banned social media use for those under 16, and similar bans covering teenagers are being examined or prepared in the United Kingdom, France and other EU countries.
The German expert commission agreed on one point: "For both alternatives, national go-it-alone approaches should be avoided." The reasoning given is that the relevant platforms offer their services across borders, making national requirements difficult to enforce.
It is also uncertain whether national rules would survive in competition with EU legislation.
Putting platforms on the hook
Overall, the experts argue that the burden of responsibility should fall less on children and young people and more on platform providers.
They recommend "a binding catalogue of safe and age-appropriate default settings" designed primarily to curb the risk of addiction. These would include a ban on algorithmically controlled feeds or recommendation systems, personalized content delivery and personalized advertising, as well as addictive endless-scroll feeds and prompts such as "Your friends are waiting for you."
Olaf Köller, co-chair of the commission, put it this way: "It is not the child that must adapt to the digital world, but the digital world that must adapt to the child. Locking children and young people out of the digital world is not protection."
However, children and young people must be shielded from what they were not yet equipped to handle, he said. They must be empowered "to take their digital lives into their own hands."
Prien also stressed that a society-wide task awaited all levels of government, science, schools, youth welfare services and families. "Our goal is a forward-looking overall strategy that equally strengthens protection, empowerment and participation, and intelligently combines regulation, education and prevention," she said.
