False information, bullying, hate speech and harassment: The majority of young people in Germany come into contact with problematic content via messenger services such as Whatsapp, Signal and Co. That is the result of a representative survey by the mobile network operator Vodafone and the election research institute Infratest Dimap. According to this, 61 percent of the 14 to 24-year-olds surveyed stated that they had received false information through chats.
Half of them receive false news from friends at school, university or work
Among the platforms on which the study participants found false information circulated particularly frequently were WhatsApp and the chat functions of Twitter, Facebook or Instagram: 40 percent of young people have already seen false news on these services. There were fewer with Telegram (12 percent), Snapchat (11 percent) and Discord (9 percent).
Every second person received such messages from friends at school, university or the professional environment. 40 percent received false information from people they did not know. But people with whom the respondents have a closer relationship also sent them fake news: 37 percent of 14 to 24-year-olds received it from friends and 27 percent from family members.
Messenger: Bullying and harassment are a big problem – especially for young women
Many young people were also confronted with bullying and hate speech: every third person has been insulted, bullied or threatened themselves. About half saw bullying (53 percent) and hate speech (48 percent) in the chats. Harassment was also a topic in the study, which particularly affected girls and young women: 40 percent of them stated in the survey that they had already been harassed with pornographic content or attempted contact via a messenger.
In the case of young men, it was 29 percent. According to the study, 40 percent have already taken a stand against false information and offensive or racist content in a chat group. In addition, 40 percent of those surveyed have already reported problematic content to the platforms. However, only 40 percent of the reports were successful. It also turned out to be problematic that a third did not receive any feedback on the report.
99 percent of young people use Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal and Co.
In view of the heavy use of messenger services among 14 to 24 year olds in Germany, the results of the study are particularly serious: Almost all (99 percent) of the 2064 respondents use messenger services, over three quarters of them (76 percent) use them more than an hour a day. Almost a quarter (23 percent) use services such as Whatsapp, Signal or Telegram for more than four hours a day.
“Information that is sent via chats has a particularly trustworthy effect. This makes spreading disinformation via messenger particularly dangerous for young people, ”said Inger Paus, Managing Director of the Vodafone Foundation, about the results of the study. It has long been underestimated that messenger services such as Whatsapp and Telegram have a significant influence on the formation of opinions and the mental health of young people. Paus spoke out in favor of strengthening media literacy, political opinion-forming and youth protection from the political side.
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