Minimum age for social media: An end to laissez-faire policies at last?

By Misch Pautsch Switch to German for original article

Christiane Fisch paid close attention to her children's screen time during their upbringing. Today, over 15 years later, politicians are beginning to ask themselves similar questions. After Australia, the EU is now also thinking about regulating social media for young people – while Luxembourg is taking a wait-and-see approach.

"After reading that, I couldn't really do it any other way!" Christiane Fisch taps a finger on the volume in front of her on the table: Vorsicht Bildschirm! Elektronische Medien, Gehirnentwicklung, Gesundheit und Gesellschaft by Manfred Spitzer. The book, which is almost 20 years old, has strongly influenced the educational priorities of the mother of two children. Its core message should be self-evident today: exposing young children to too many screens too early is bad for their development. Although it was about TV screens back then, this is all the more true when it comes to smartphones. "It's not just about the time they spend in front of a screen, but also that they are not engaged in motor or language activities during that time. These time windows in their development are closed at some point and it becomes extremely difficult to catch up, " says Fisch. That's why her children never saw a screen until they were four years old. "We always tried to explain the potential dangers and set an example of healthy behaviour. It went so far that my husband wasn't allowed to watch his sports programme, " she recalls with a laugh.

It was only later that the family sat down in front of the TV once a week, always on Friday evenings "mat Schnittercher an an Decken agewéckelt" (with snacks and blankets), to watch a film together. "And we've basically kept that up until now. I couldn't say that they haven't asked once, but in general there have never been any discussions about watching TV during the week. It's just not an issue." Her son got his first mobile phone when he was twelve because he needed it to use the school transport.

According to the miniKIM study from Germany quoted in Bee Secure Radar, he is one of the last ten per cent of children to get a smartphone – 90 per cent own one before that, with one in five children already having one by the age of nine. The trend is even faster for tablets: by the age of eight, more than one in three children already own one, and by the age of ten it is already half.

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