Germany adopts age rules for social media ahead of d-you wallet launch

As Europe coordinates its next move toward a unified policy on age restrictions for social media, Germany has adopted interim policy guidelines that prohibit anyone under 13 from using social platforms that are not “demonstrably child-friendly.” The rules also apply graduated usage restrictions on accounts belonging to users between 13 and 18, and advise platforms to stop addictive designs by default. Germany’s government is well on track to implement some functional version of its EU Digital Identity Wallet offering by the end of 2026. The wallet, called d-you, will enable tokenized reusable age verification based on the EU blueprint. The government’s wider strategy around age assurance is framed around enabling kids in the digital world, rather than blocking them. Its policy guidelines, based on an independent expert commission on Child and Youth Protection in the Digital World, note that one in four kids exhibits “problematic usage patterns” on social media, and implicates the problem in the general decline of literacy. It also holds parents to account. “Excessive or problematic media use can be associated with a variety of health problems, such as obesity, sleep disorders, and developmental, attachment, and behavioral problems,” the government says in an announcement of its plan. “Parents’ use of digital media can have a significant impact on their children’s development. Therefore, the German Federal Government aims to raise parents’ awareness as early as possible about the effects of both their own media use and their children’s media use.” Social media harms force consensus on divided world Germany’s specific targeting of algorithmic recommendation systems that cause social media addiction in teens is framed in terms that are increasingly fueling policy discussions globally. Building on the foundational idea that the internet should be age aware and appropriate, just as the real world is, policy debates have leveled up from age assurance arguments to consider a question with wider implications: what are we willing to let social media companies do with, and to, our kids? Or, for that matter, our society? Platforms have shown themselves resistant to third-party age assurance measures that aim to prevent kids from gaining access. In doing so, they have catalyzed conversations about a digital duty of care: the idea that social media should have to take care of their customers, just as any business does, and that they should be held legally accountable when they don’t. The German government pledges that, “in the spirit of shared responsibility, states, municipalities, associations, and society as a whole will be continuously and closely involved” in efforts to transform online safety regulation. “For the Federal Government, it is a societal responsibility and task to enable children and young people to participate safely in the digital world.”