Parents' concerns about their children's online safety are increasing. Children and young people encounter online risks more frequently. These are the findings of the Youth Media Protection Index 2022, which has now been published as a brochure. HBI researchers Dr. Claudia Lampert, Dr. Stephan Dreyer and Kira Thiel participated in this study.
Findings
77 percent of parents in Germany are concerned that their child will have stressful or bad experiences while using the internet. The figure for adolescents is only 44 percent. While parents are particularly concerned about their children being in contact with strangers and with disturbing content, children and adolescents are most worried about the behaviour of other adolescents.
Although parents are more concerned now than they were five years ago, their active media education is declining. They seem to find it difficult to strike the right balance between protection and enabling their children to use media.
Only a few parents and adolescents know about support services as well as complaint and reporting offices and make use of them. Overall, parental knowledge about support services and hotlines has actually decreased compared to 2017. However, 60 percent of children and adolescents say they know who they would turn to if they had a negative online experience.
About the study
The empirical basis of the study "Youth Media Protection Index 2022" is a nationwide representative survey of adolescents between the ages of 9 and 16 who use the internet and one parent in each case who is responsible for online education or who is most familiar with the child's online use. A total of 805 adolescents and their parents were surveyed between March and May 2022. The study was published by the
German Association for Voluntary Self-Regulation of Digital Media Service Providers (FSM e.V.). It was conducted by the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) and
JFF – Institute for Media Research and Media Education. First results had already been presented in October 2022.
Download the complete Youth Media Protection Index 2022 (barrier-free PDF, in German)
You can find more information about the study here
