Social Media: Population Favors Regulation—but Ban Only for Those up to the Age of 12

Jörg Dollmann, Christian Hunkler, Nicolas Legewie, Julian B. Axenfeld, Andreas Franken and Felix von Heusinger

DIW Weekly Report, 2026, vol. 16, issue 10, 79-88

Abstract: Social media usage by children and young people is an increasingly controversial topic. The focus is on risks, opportunities, and possible regulations. Politicians from all relevant parties are now open to a social media ban up to a certain age; the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs has set up a commission of experts. Based on a short survey in the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), conducted in September 2025 in cooperation with the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) and the University of Münster, this Weekly Report examines the population's attitudes toward this issue. The results paint an ambivalent picture: a large majority consider social media to be a risk, but at the same time a significant proportion also recognize opportunities; more than half of those surveyed see both sides. While a majority support bans for children up to the age of 12 and in schools, a ban up to the age of 16 is overwhelmingly rejected. There is significantly broader support for alternative protective measures, such as promoting media literacy, parental supervision, and regulatory requirements for platform providers. The findings argue in favor of differentiated, context-specific regulatory approaches rather than blanket bans.

Keywords: Social; media; ban (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D19 I28 K24 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_ ... 5.de/dwr-26-10-1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwdwr:dwr16-10-1

Access Statistics for this article

DIW Weekly Report is currently edited by Tomaso Duso, Marcel Fratzscher, Peter Haan, Claudia Kemfert, Alexander Kritikos, Alexander Kriwoluzky, Stefan Liebig, Lukas Menkhoff, Karsten Neuhoff, Carsten Schröder, Katharina Wrohlich and Sabine Fiedler

More articles in DIW Weekly Report from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().