This is all I know about the Wandervogel movement, that existed from the late 1890s to the mid 1930s, and was a youth response to industrialization and their increasingly polluted cities and lifestyle (they were escapist romantics).

1. Wandervogel translates to 'migratory bird' (which is how they thought of themselves, using a bird silhouette as their emblem).
2. Many wandervogel would play instruments as they hiked around the forests and wilds of Germany and surrounding Europe.
3. They'd form into bands (called bunds).
4. A bund would often pool their money, food and resources in order to make sure that everyone in the bund had satisfactory clothes, food and necessities.
5. They sometimes camped out in old abandoned castles.
6. They often had a unique sense of spirituality, many considering themselves pagan due to their strong connection to nature and outdoors living.
7. Some Wandervogel campsites were so frequently used that they became permanent camps.
8. Some of these camps went on to be the very first youth hostels - and the Wandervogel are why we have youth hostels today.
9. One such camp was known as Monte Verita or "Hill of Truth" and was located near the Swiss/Italian border it was later turned into a facility for alternate education; and then a conference center.
10. During Hitler's rise to power he banned all non-christian youth hiking groups including the Wandervogel, and attempted to fold them all into the Hitler Youth - some Wandervogel joined in order to continue their outdoor life styles - others resisted in protest. Hitler stole the image of healthy young Germans having an outdoors lifestyle and used it for propaganda purposes.
11. The Wandervogel never fully recovered in Europe, but through the eclectic ideas formed at Monte Verita (the most philosophical and esoteric of the Wandervogel camps) - much of the Wandervogel spirit was transported to America where it eventually fomented the hippie movement.
12. The Wandervogel are also where the term Lebensreform or life-reform comes from.

I hear all this ruckus caused some moral panic and was a factor in sending these youth to their death at the battle of Verdun... is this an exaggeration, is there something to it?

While I'm no expert on the movement itself, I can say that to attribute civilian responses in WWI Germany to a "moral panic", even in part, is exaggeration to say the least.

Social History of the war in general in the past 30-40 years has moved beyond the idea of a frenzied "war enthusiasm" overtaking the populations of the Great Powers. Jeffrey Verhey and Alexander Watson in particular have examined popular responses in Germany in their recent works The Spirit of 1914 and Enduring the Great War. German conscripts and volunteers by-and-large seem to have been motivated by a stoic determination, an intent to defend their homes and families from the enemy. "Moral Panic" cannot explain the resilience of the German Army at Verdun nor on the Somme in 1916, anymore than it can the way in which the German Army fought to the bitter end in 1917-18.