Most German teenagers say people around them are addicted to social media

Eight out of ten teenagers in Germany believe someone in their circle of friends or family is addicted to social media, according to a survey commissioned by Postbank. The poll, part of the bank's annual "Jugend-Digitalstudie 2026," questioned 1,000 young people aged 16 to 18 in July through the online panel Toluna.

Girls and young women were somewhat more likely than boys and young men to say they knew someone struggling with the problem, at 82 percent compared with 78 percent. Postbank described the survey as representative of the age group.

Researchers define social media addiction as a pattern in which people spend far more time on platforms than they intended, with the excess use causing damage in other parts of their lives, such as school, work, sleep or relationships.

Separate data from the health insurer DAK-Gesundheit indicates the scale of the problem among children and adolescents more broadly. According to a study by the insurer, more than a quarter of all children and teenagers in Germany use social media in a way that is either risky or already classed as pathological. The insurer said this kind of addictive behaviour has been increasing. Based on its figures, roughly 350,000 children and adolescents nationwide are considered addicted to social media.

The trend is not confined to young people. The research and treatment centre for mental health at Ruhr University Bochum reported that addictive tendencies are also rising among adults. In a survey carried out by the centre, more than a quarter of respondents showed what researchers described as "addictive-like usage" of social media.

David Dommel, head of digital performance marketing at Postbank, said the findings from the youth survey suggest many teenagers are capable of weighing up the risks posed by social networks rather than using them uncritically. He pointed to behaviour recorded in the same survey as evidence of this awareness.

According to the poll, just over half of respondents said they had already unsubscribed from a channel they had been following because they judged that it spread too much aggression or false information. Around a third of those surveyed said they had at some point deactivated their own profile on a platform, effectively taking a break from it.

That share, however, has edged down compared with the previous two years, the survey found, with slightly fewer young people reporting that they had taken such a step this year than in 2024 or 2025.

The Postbank survey and the figures from DAK-Gesundheit and the Bochum research centre point to a broader pattern of concern among both experts and young users themselves about compulsive social media use. While definitions and measurement methods differ between the studies, all three point in the same direction: a notable share of both children and adults in Germany show signs of usage patterns that researchers classify as risky or addictive.

None of the organisations involved have proposed new regulatory measures in connection with the latest figures. The reports instead focus on documenting the scale of the phenomenon as perceived by young people themselves and as measured through clinical and survey-based research among different age groups.

The Postbank study did not name specific platforms linked to the behaviour respondents described, and the survey questions focused on general perceptions of social media use rather than any single app or service. DAK-Gesundheit's estimate of about 350,000 affected children and teenagers was likewise presented as a national figure drawn from its broader research into youth media habits, rather than tied to any individual platform.