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Stefan Glaser (lr), head of jugendschutz.net, Lisa Paus (Alliance 90/The Greens), Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, Katharina Binz, Minister for Family Affairs of Rhineland Palatinate, and Marc Jan Eumann (SPD) present the annual report of jugendschutz.net/picture alliance, dpa, Kay Nietfeld

Berlin – Fake nude photos and age verification that doesn’t work: Young people face great dangers on the Internet every day. According to a recent report by the Jugendschutz.net platform, modern technologies are increasing this potential danger, particularly when it comes to sexual violence.

Jugendschutz.net recorded almost 5,000 cases of sexual violence against children and young people on the Internet in its report for 2023 presented yesterday. This represents two-thirds of all violations of youth protection laws registered online and 161 cases more than in the previous year, 2022.

In total, the joint competence center of the federal and state governments registered 7,645 violations of child and youth protection on the Internet – 282 more cases than in 2022. Twelve percent of the violations recorded were pornography and sexual depictions, and eleven percent were political extremism, it said.

The number of unreported cases is likely to be significantly higher, explained the head of Jugendschutz.net, Stefan Glaser. Of the 4,983 cases of sexual violence, several hundred depictions were sometimes combined in one case, he explained.

Since terrorist attack on Israel, much hatred of Jews on the Internet

Overall, Glaser and his 55-strong team report that the digital sources of danger for young people are becoming ever greater. This is also due to applications of artificial intelligence, which are making it increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from fakes.

This also increases the risk of the spread of sexual violence, bullying and extremism. Since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel in October last year, Jugendschutz.net has also registered increasing hate propaganda against Jews – especially on services such as Tiktok or Instagram.

Glaser stressed that young people are increasingly getting information about current world events there. It is therefore all the more problematic if they come into contact with extreme and anti-Semitic content there. Anti-Muslim propaganda is also often spread unfiltered.

Glaser complains that online services are currently “doing too little” to protect children and young people. “They do not respond adequately when violations are reported to them. And they do not adequately check the age information provided by users.”

Since February of this year, there has been a legal framework that obliges major platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, etc. to effectively protect children, for example through reporting systems, explained Federal Minister for Family Affairs Lisa Paus (Greens), who was also on the podium when the report was presented.

It is the task of the EU Commission to enforce this right – this is now happening step by step. The providers are obliged, for example, to delete reported content of sexual violence. If they do not do so, according to Paus, they face a fine of up to six percent of the company’s global turnover.

Abuse Commissioner calls for tougher approach

The Federal Government’s Commissioner for Child and Adolescent Abuse, Kerstin Claus, is not satisfied with all of this. Her devastating verdict: “Currently, there is practically no protection for children and young people on the Internet.”

She is therefore calling for stricter action against all those who do not comply with the rules – and in particular means providers of video platforms, social networks and online games with chat functions. The current obligations are not being adequately implemented.

“Confrontation with sexual violence on the Internet is far too often an everyday reality for children and young people,” explained Claus. That must change. “Online providers must be obliged to implement legally prescribed precautions in a binding manner.”

Age verification often inadequate

Jugendschutz.net cites age verification on online services as a major weakness. “Providers do not check age or do so inadequately,” the report states. They only ask for the date of birth and do not verify the information.

Minors can easily pretend to be adults and vice versa, it is said. Marc Jan Eumann, Chairman of the Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media, pointed out that there is no lack of suitable programs for age verification.

There are already programs that determine the age of users via a real-time recording via webcam and are “extremely precise” for the age cohort between 16 and 21 years.

“There is no reason for providers not to use such systems,” said Eumann. In this context, Family Minister Paus announced that her department is currently working on its own concept for age verification and wants to present it by Christmas.

At the same time, the minister stressed that the fight against sexualized depictions of young people on the Internet is a “task for society as a whole.” Eumann’s appeal to all parents: “Don’t post a picture of your child online without pixelation and with their name!”

Services do not take reported violations seriously

Overall, the youth protection report comes to the conclusion that services used by young people often do not take reported violations seriously. The average deletion rate of inappropriate content such as violence, pornography and political extremism is only less than a third, it says.

Platforms such as Tiktok, YouTube or Instagram do not fully fulfill their duty to delete reported content and often only do so after official bodies have intervened. For 2023, the platform gives the YouTube service in particular a bad report: the service deleted only four percent of the reported pornographic content that year.

In 2022, the figure was 62 percent. Glaser’s platform does not yet know why the deletions decreased so dramatically. © dpa/aerzteblatt.de