Social Media Ban Debate: Facts Over Gut Feeling

Since December 2025, young people under the age of 16 in Australia have been prohibited from using platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat. Similar calls for restrictions are growing louder in Germany. However, researchers from the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), and the Weizenbaum Institute caution against hasty political measures without robust evidence.

CAIS at re:publica 2026

Researchers from CAIS are represented at Europe’s leading conference on digital society, re:publica 2026 in Berlin. Their contributions focus on current debates around social media regulation for young people, vibe coding, deepfakes, and digital sovereignty through decentralized networks.

Tightening the Interconnection of Digitalization Research

At the annual meeting of the Network of Institutes for Digitalization Research in Hamburg, current priorities such as open science, interdisciplinarity, futures research, and transdisciplinary approaches as well as issues of cooperation and institutional structure were discussed, and further collaboration among the participating German research institutes was coordinated.