Overview

• The Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina’s August 13 discussion paper calls for no own social-media accounts under 13 and staged functional limits—such as disabling livestreaming, push notifications and endless scroll for under-16s and pausing use after 45 minutes—up to age 17.
• Green party leader Cem Özdemir and federal ministers including Karsten Wildberger and Karin Prien have publicly endorsed a minimum age of 16 for unaccompanied social-media use.
• A Bundestag scientific-services analysis highlights that the EU’s Digital Services Act and the origin-country principle pose significant legal obstacles to a unilateral German ban, shifting focus to EU-level measures and age-verification tools under the forthcoming European Digital Identity wallet.
• YouGov data show more than 70 percent of Germans support setting a minimum age for social-media access, with 57 percent favoring 16 as the threshold.
• Child-welfare and media-education organizations warn that blanket bans could disenfranchise young people and call instead for stronger media literacy programs and targeted, enforceable technical safeguards.