Demokratielabore

How can we empower children and young adults today to become the shapers of tomorrow’s society? What makes young adults more visible as actors? What role do digital technologies play here? And how can participation succeed on both the digital and social levels?

In order to answer these and other questions, we have developed various workshop formats and materials with the democracy labs in order to help a broad target group of children and young adults to experience self-efficacy in the field of democracy and technology. The formats are designed for different target groups of extracurricular youth education. On the one hand, they enable workshop leaders to communicate topics such as cyberbullying, fake news, populism, urban design, data protection, influencing, diversity, and freedom of expression. On the other hand, we developed self-learning materials that young adults can use independently to learn about social topics and digital tools, as well as implement their own projects. In addition, we have carried out training courses for specialists with the Data School in order to make use of the opportunities of digitisation in everyday extracurricular youth work.

Background
Everyday life and experiences of young adults in Germany have changed completely within a generation: the digital revolution encompasses all areas of public and private life, and shapes our relationships and coexistence in our society. Although the spread of modern technologies and their consumption-oriented use for communication, information, and entertainment is already well advanced, the shaping of society is lagging behind mechanisation. It is therefore our goal to reconquer the Internet as a positive creative space and to enable young adults to experience self-efficacy experiences in the confrontation with digitality as well as democratic structures and processes.