WODY – Research project on children and young people growing up in a digital world approved

The Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), in collaboration with the German Youth Institute (DJI) and the University of Oldenburg, is conducting a Germany-wide panel study to investigate how digital environments shape children’s upbringing and well-being.

Digital media are now an integral part of young people’s everyday lives – whether in learning, leisure, friendships or family life. The panel study ‘Growing Up in Digital Europe’ (GUIDE) aims to comprehensively investigate, for the first time, how this digital environment affects the well-being and development of children and young people in the long term. To this end, comparable data will be collected across several European countries, enabling the analysis of developmental trajectories across national borders. The German contribution to this project, entitled ‘Well-being in the Ongoing Digital Age: The German Child and Youth Panel’ (WODY for short), is being carried out by researchers from the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), the German Youth Institute (DJI) and the University of Oldenburg. They will initially receive funding totalling around 4.3 million euros over three years from the German Research Foundation (as part of a DFG long-term project). The project is designed to run for a total of 12 years. It is due to start on 1 October 2026.

The project will link survey data from parents and children with directly collected data on digital media use, such as the duration and nature of smartphone use. This will enable a nuanced understanding of the digital daily lives of parents, children and young people. In Germany, from 2027 onwards, two cohorts – eight-year-old schoolchildren and nine-month-old infants – will be followed over several years. The participating children will be interviewed themselves from the age of five; their parents will be interviewed beforehand and subsequently in parallel at least every three years. Thanks to this funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG), WODY can make an important contribution to a European research project and thus ‘lay the foundations for further research and evidence-based policy’ (Prof. Dr C. Katharina Spieß).

In addition to the project leaders, Prof. Dr C. Katharina Spieß (BiB) and Prof. Dr Susanne Kuger (DJI), the scientific management of the WODY project also involves Dr Sabine Düval (DJI), Prof. Dr Sabine Walper (DJI), Dr Mathias Huebener (BiB) and Prof. Dr Michael Feldhaus (University of Oldenburg). This German team will work closely with the European consortium of the GUIDE project, led by Prof. Dr Seaneen Sloan (University College Dublin) and Prof. Dr Gary Pollock (Manchester Metropolitan University).

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Further information on this DFG project can be found here.