Vodafone Foundation: Effective Age Verification for Social Media Demanded

The Vodafone Foundation has published a guide with ten recommendations for action for politicians, educational actors, and platform operators. The most important demands in relation to the driving debates of this year are a "mandatory, effective, and data-saving age verification for high-risk platforms" and a smartphone ban at least until the end of the lower secondary school level (Sekundarstufe I) in schools.

The foundation derives the ten recommendations, among other things, from its youth study "Between Screen Time and Self-Regulation" published this year. The surveyed young people made it clear that they would like to use fewer social media offerings and also hoped for more support in doing so. The foundation is now passing the ball to those who can change the framework conditions for internet and educational offerings.

The foundation explains that adolescents continue to be in an "charged field of tension between opportunities and burdens from social media." They are also "quite informed and self-critical" about the opportunities and risks their social media behavior entails, and have already acquired techniques for competent use of online offerings themselves. However, this is not enough, as the youth study has shown. Therefore, politics is now needed that "equally focuses on strengthening self-regulation skills, support services, and legal protection."

According to the foundation, young people are more likely to seek support in school life than in their own homes when they notice problems with their usage behavior or online phenomena. This is also pronounced, unlike with other educational topics, regardless of the socio-economic background of the young people. The foundation therefore advises offering services to all young people and not focusing on group-specific approaches such as the "Startchancenprogramm" (start-up opportunities program).

Accordingly, the foundation demands that the following ten points be implemented by politicians, educational actors, and platform operators:

1. mandatory, effective, and data-saving age verification for high-risk platforms.

Providers of such platforms have so far refused to implement an effective system for verifying age when setting up an account. Accordingly, there should be a state-managed tool that also requires parental consent for those under 16 years of age and which providers must integrate.

2. a ban on manipulative and addictive design elements such as endless scrolling, variable reward systems, or aggressive push notifications.

This must apply to social media platforms at least for accounts of minors. Instead, well-being-oriented design standards should be developed.

3. the introduction of mandatory and independent risk audits for social media platforms that regularly assess their impact on children and adolescents.

The results must be fully published and demonstrably incorporated into the design of algorithms, content, and security mechanisms. The goal: "Accountability by Design."

4. the binding integration of social media competence into school media education at the latest from the lower secondary level (Sekundarstufe I) – with clear curricular guidelines, regular projects, and dialogue-oriented formats.

5. support for schools in providing adequate digital and media literacy training.

Currently, schools lack sufficient personnel resources. Therefore, "cross-sectoral cooperation of all available public institutions, from youth welfare and media authorities to public cultural institutions, is needed to establish an adequate media literacy program for children and adolescents in this region at the local and regional level."

6. the involvement of civil society and the economy in the development of media education in order to activate their resources and make them available to educational institutions in a coordinated manner.

Cooperation with extracurricular learning places must therefore be strengthened, and the expansion of closed all-day schooling offers the opportunity to provide pedagogically meaningful activities in the afternoon.

7. the promotion of evidence-based methods, programs, and tools to support the development of self-control and self-regulation for young people by politics, science, and the education industry.

8. a smartphone ban in classrooms and during lessons until the end of the lower secondary level (Sekundarstufe I).

The foundation also explains that there are many reasons not to allow smartphones for use during breaks. Mobile phones, unless needed as an instrument in media literacy formats, are "primarily a source of distraction and partly also a way to bypass learning steps. Most digital learning tools are didactically more meaningful to use on tablets or laptops."

9. the systematic expansion of parental work for media education "through low-threshold, digital, and school-linked offerings."

The competence, self-confidence, and also the willingness to take responsibility of parents to guide their children through the social media world on a good path must be massively strengthened.

10. the participation of children and adolescents as a binding component in the development and definition of digital competencies and rules at schools.

The recommendations for action by the Vodafone Foundation are reminiscent of the guidelines for safe internet use for children in the United Kingdom. There too, effective age verification and secure feeds were demanded. Australia has now enforced a minimum age for social media.

(kbe)