New report from jugendschutz.net: Pandemic exacerbates dangers for children on the net

Dangerous challenges, drastic violence, hate and conspiracy theories: In the Corona crisis, the risks for young people on the web have intensified. Especially when using messengers, social networks and online games, children and young people are confronted with content that endangers or impairs them. If users report violations of youth protection regulations, many service operators do not react adequately. Reliable approaches that protect against interaction risks are also scarce. This is shown by the current annual report of jugendschutz.net.

New report from jugendschutz.net: Pandemic exacerbates dangers for children on the net

"The pandemic has led to children and young people being online more often and for longer. They play, communicate and amuse themselves on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube. Especially there, dangers are just a click away," says Stefan Glaser, head of jugendschutz.net. "Sexual come-ons, racist incitement, violations of privacy - children are already exposed to all of this on the net."

The chairman of the Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media (KJM), Dr. Marc Jan Eumann, emphasizes the central role of technical child and youth protection in this context: "In recent years, the KJM has given positive ratings to more than 70 age verification programs. These systems are an important building block. They ensure that children and young people do not have access to harmful content. At the same time, there is still a lot of room for improvement: Many providers already use machine learning and hash processes for automatic image recognition. Why are these mechanisms not implemented even better for the protection of children and young people by all relevant actors*?"

jugendschutz.net registered a total of 5,056 cases of infringement in 2020 (2019: 6,950), 55 % of them in social media offerings. At 41%, depictions of sexualized violence again accounted for the largest share (2019: 37%). 21% of the violations were attributable to the phenomenon of political extremism, 14% to pornography, followed by self-endangerment (12%), violence (9%) and cyberbullying (3%).

The complete annual report of jugendschutz.net is available for download here.

Background information on jugendschutz.net

jugendschutz.net acts as the joint competence center of the federal and state governments for the protection of children and young people on the Internet. The center researches dangers and risks in youth-related services. It works to ensure that violations of youth protection regulations are eliminated and that services are designed in such a way that children and young people can use them without worry. jugendschutz.net is financed by the supreme state youth authorities, the state media authorities and the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

jugendschutz.net accepts tips about violations of youth media protection. Violations on the net can be reported here.