(de-news.net) – A consumer survey shows overwhelming public support for stronger protections for children and adolescents in digital services, finance, and nutrition. The findings coincide with an intensifying political debate over social media regulation, age restrictions, and platform accountability, with consumer advocates favoring stricter regulation over blanket bans.
A broad majority of people in Germany believe policymakers should take stronger action to protect young consumers, according to the 2026 Consumer Report published by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV). The survey suggests that public concern is centered on three closely linked areas affecting children and adolescents: digital services, financial protection, and nutrition.
The findings are based on a Forsa telephone survey of approximately 1,500 respondents aged 14 and older conducted in April. Overall, 79 percent said the government should provide stronger protections for children and adolescents even if doing so requires stricter regulation of companies and digital platforms. Respondents expressed the greatest dissatisfaction with current safeguards in the online environment, where 87% rated political efforts to protect minors using social media platforms and online games as poor or rather poor. Similar concerns extended to financial protection, with 82 percent describing existing measures against youth over-indebtedness as inadequate. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed, or 74 percent, also favored stronger government measures to promote healthier nutrition for children and adolescents, indicating broad public support for expanded consumer protection across multiple policy areas.
The debate over youth protection has increasingly focused on online services, where lawmakers are weighing whether stronger regulation, age restrictions, or changes to platform design would provide the most effective safeguards. Against that backdrop, the parliamentary group of Germany’s CDU/CSU alliance has continued to advocate a national minimum-age framework for adolescent social media use. Deputy parliamentary leader Anja Weisgerber (CSU) said earlier this week that recommendations issued by an EU expert panel underscored the growing need for stronger protections for children online. She said the alliance supported a risk-based protection model covering users between the ages of 13 and 16 that would be tailored to the specific risks presented by individual social media platforms and comparable digital services.
Weisgerber also argued that an EU-wide legislative framework would represent the preferred long-term solution because it could establish harmonized standards for protecting children and adolescents throughout the bloc. At the same time, she noted that legislation involving all 27 member states would likely require considerable time and that the substance of the European proposals would still need careful examination. For that reason, she said, the governing coalition, working together with Family Affairs Minister Karin Prien (CDU), was simultaneously pursuing national legislation aimed at strengthening child protection online more quickly while contributing constructively to the broader European legislative process. Earlier this week, an expert commission submitted recommendations to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that included a proposed minimum age of 13 for access to social media platforms.
VZBV backs stronger digital safeguards while opposing broad social media ban for youth
The proposal has drawn criticism from opposition parties, which argue that regulating platforms rather than excluding young users would provide a more effective response. Nicole Gohlke, education policy spokesperson for The Left, argued that removing children from online platforms would not amount to meaningful child protection. She contended that mandatory age-verification systems would raise significant concerns regarding civil liberties and data protection while creating additional dependence on digital identity infrastructures without addressing the underlying structural problems. Instead, she called for stronger regulation of platform architecture, including the default removal of addictive algorithms, personalized recommendation systems, and infinite scrolling.
The Greens advanced a similar position. Denise Loop, the party’s youth affairs spokesperson, argued that effective child protection requires legally binding obligations for technology companies, including disabling addictive platform features by default, activating stronger safety mechanisms, and clearly identifying AI-generated content.
VZBV Executive Board member Ramona Pop likewise argued that young consumers increasingly navigate a complex environment shaped by unhealthy food choices, addictive online media, and financial risks. She maintained that policymakers had not sufficiently fulfilled their responsibility to ensure that children and adolescents are able to grow up safely while participating fully in both digital and offline society. According to Pop, the Federal Government should strengthen safety requirements for digital platforms, reduce the risks of fraud and excessive indebtedness among young consumers, and establish regulatory conditions that make healthier nutrition more accessible.
Addressing proposals for a social media ban targeting minors, Pop rejected blanket prohibitions, arguing that such measures would do little to improve safety while unnecessarily excluding young people from digital participation. She instead advocated comprehensive regulation of platform design and functionality. As examples of features requiring closer oversight, she pointed to automatic location-sharing functions that can expose users to unwanted contact, as well as autoplay functions and infinite scrolling, which she argued should be prohibited or subjected to substantially stricter regulatory controls.
Although EU experts and the Family Affairs Minister have supported prohibiting children under the age of 13 from accessing social media platforms, Pop maintained that comprehensive platform regulation would provide a more effective and sustainable approach than rigid age-based restrictions. In support of that position, she cited unpublished findings from the VZBV Consumer Report indicating that 81 percent of respondents between the ages of 14 and 29 believe online platforms themselves should bear greater responsibility for ensuring their services are safe for all users, rather than relying primarily on broad exclusions that prevent children and adolescents from participating in digital services.
