Improving the protection of children and young people online

Bullying and harassment in social media | Platform operators must take better precautions | Annual report presented by jugendschutz.net

Improving the protection of children and young people online
www.jugendschutz.net/fileadmin/download/pdf/bericht2017.pdf

Children and young people are confronted with insults and harassment on social media every day - and need better protection. This is made clear by the annual report of jugendschutz.net presented on September 13, 2018.

In 2017, jugendschutz.net checked more than 100,000 offers for violations against the protection of minors in the media and identified 7,513 violations. Although a quick deletion could be achieved in 80% of all infringement cases, at the same time the report shows that the platforms have so far taken too few precautions.

"It is not enough that providers like Tik Tok or Instagram only react to notices", explains Friedemann Schindler, head of jugendschutz.net. "If 8-year-olds are already on the services, safe default settings are a must."

"Children and young people have a right to protection and participation - also in social media", emphasizes State Secretary Juliane Seifert (BMFSFJ). Anyone offering an app that is popular with a young target group must also guarantee safe usage options. "In order to enable children and young people to grow up well with media, we will modernize the legal protection regulations and oblige providers to improve prevention", says the state secretary.

"The social web is an integral part of children's and young people's everyday lives. In the age of smartphones and social media, parents must be better supported in assessing the suitability of an app for their child's age", underlines Rhineland-Palatinate's State Secretary for Youth Dr. Christiane Rohleder. "It cannot be that the risk of being insulted and harassed plays no role in the age rating of apps."

"The existing protection programs are almost ineffective on the social web - of all places where children and young people are predominantly online ", states Dr. Wolfgang Kreißig, Chairman of the KJM. In view of the abundance of violations and assaults, functioning technical mechanisms are an important component of modern youth protection. "We are setting the standards for this and will promote solutions that also include 'artificial intelligence'.

The current annual report of jugendschutz.net can be downloaded here.

jugendschutz.net - "Youth Policy Competence Center for the Protection of Young Users on the Net" is funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth as part of the federal program "Demokratie leben!".