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Germany's Chancellor Merz joins calls for social media limits for children

 Published: 11:27, 19 February 2026

Germany's Chancellor Merz joins calls for social media limits for children

Chancellor Friedrich Merz backed growing calls in Germany for controls on access to social media platforms by children, saying he had become increasingly persuaded of the need for compulsory limits by evidence of the harm done by the deliberate spreading of fake news and other forms of online manipulation.

"Do we want to allow artificially generated false news, fake news, artificially generated films and misrepresentations to be spread via social media?" he said in a speech ahead of his conservative Christian Union's annual party conference. "Do we want to allow our society to be undermined in this way, both internally and externally, and our young people and children to be endangered in this way?" he said, noting that 14-year-olds spent an average of five and a half hours a day online.

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