The Competence Area Growing Up in Digital Media Environments researches how children and young people use digital media, what opportunities and risks are associated with it and how do they deal with the diverse possibilities? Who is responsible for ensuring that adolescents acquire the necessary media skills, but are also protected from media-related risks?
Children today are growing up in digitalized and convergent, rapidly changing media environments. They also come into contact with online media at an increasingly early age, which offers them a wide range of opportunities, but also presents them with new challenges. In order to develop concepts for the promotion of media literacy that are suitable for everyday use as well as regulatory frameworks for the protection of children and young people from harmful media, it is important to observe current offers and developments and to take a differentiated look at the usage practices of adolescents.
As part of national and international research networks and projects, the Institute has been working for many years on issues of media socialization, media education and the evaluation and further development of the youth media protection system in digital media environments.
The combination of communication and educational science perspectives with legal expertise has proven to be particularly fruitful in this field. This is particularly true when it comes to formulating recommendations for action for different groups of actors based on empirical findings, which aim to promote contemporary media literacy and modern youth media protection.
Contact: Dr. Claudia Lampert