BERLIN. Many young voters are voting for the AfD. Social media plays an important role in this. This has brought education experts into action. They are calling for media education in schools to be improved. But is that enough?
Following the AfD’s electoral success among young voters in Brandenburg, teachers’ associations are calling for better media education in German schools. “Social media can act as a catalyst, especially at the beginning of a radicalization,” said the federal chairman of the Association for Education and Training (VBE), Gerhard Brand, to the editorial network Germany (RND).
Young people quickly find themselves “in a swamp of dangerous worldviews and self-affirmation.” Media education in schools, but also by parents, is called upon to explain such mechanisms and to warn against obtaining too one-sided information.
“In ten percent of German schools, there are still no class sets of digital devices available”
Brand also calls for schools to be better equipped. “But if ten percent of German schools still do not have class sets of digital devices and the Digital Pact 2.0 is currently still pending, we should not be surprised if schools cannot afford it,” criticized the association head.
“Social media often encourage extremes,” said the Federal Chair of the German Philologists’ Association, Prof. Susanne Lin-Klitzing, to the RND. It is essential that media education plays an important role in schools and that students are enabled to critically question information. To do this, teachers must be trained accordingly. However, they have too little time and money available for further training, criticizes the head of the association.
According to the current JIM study, which annually records young people’s media consumption, young people are online for an average of 224 minutes a day. Messenger and social media in particular play a major role. WhatsApp is used regularly by 94 percent. Instagram ranks second with 62 percent, followed by TikTok with 59 percent and Snapchat with 49 percent.
What is striking is that social media such as TikTok and YouTube are rapidly increasing in importance as a source of information. A year earlier, only 22 percent of young people said they regularly used YouTube to find out about world events, but in the latest study this figure has risen to 33 percent, or half as much. The picture is similar for TikTok: In 2022, 25 percent of young people said they used this channel to get news at least several times a week, but a year later this figure had risen to 30 percent.
There is a pattern in who gets their information from where: “Differences can be seen with regard to formal educational background,” the study says. “For example, young people who attend a grammar school come into contact with current world events more frequently, particularly in conversations with family and friends, and come across information more frequently in news on TV/radio, special news apps and online newspapers/magazines. Young people who attend a secondary school find this information more frequently on Snapchat and TikTok.”
“The high level of exposure to misinformation and hate messages among young people is alarming”
As part of the study, the young people were also asked which of the following negative phenomena they had encountered online in the last month. According to their own statements, 58 percent had come into contact with fake news, and a good half with offensive comments. Around two in five young people had been confronted with extreme political views, conspiracy theories or hate messages in the month before the survey. 23 percent had unintentionally come across pornographic content, and 14 percent had experienced hostility towards them personally. Only 27 percent could say that they had not encountered any of these phenomena on the Internet in the last month. Conversely, almost three quarters of young people had had negative experiences within a month.
However, it must be noted that the perspective of young people is only the tip of the iceberg – in order to identify fake news, you first have to recognize it. It can therefore be assumed that young people are confronted with false information and propaganda far more often than they themselves realize. “The high level of confrontation with false information and hate messages among young people is alarming. In view of this challenge, it is of the utmost importance to promote the media literacy of young people,” says Wolfgang Kreißig, Chairman of the Directors’ Conference of the State Media Authorities, commenting on the results.
But is that enough? The democratic parties are also required to address young people better – at least that is what the President of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Thomas Krüger, thinks. He complains about a “lack of political communication at eye level”, especially on social media. Only the AfD succeeds in addressing young people in the media, he told the editorial network. Krüger calls for a “sustained focus on the interests of the young generation in Germany and an offensive youth and education policy”.
The current JIM study can be downloaded here.
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