The Turkish parliament on Wednesday passed the latest national ban on social media for children, joining a trend that began with Australia’s landmark ban in December 2025.
Turkey banned social media for children under 15, requiring all platforms to implement strict age verification procedures. The law also covers online gaming platforms, which often have a social media element.
In addition to burdening social media and gaming platforms with creating age verification systems, Turkey also requires them to explain the intricacies of the new law to their users, create “user-friendly” tools for parental control, and avoid running “deceptive ads.”
Online game companies will be required to appoint “representatives” to Turkey to serve as compliance officers. Violations of the new law can be punished by fines and restrictions on Internet bandwidth.
Turkey’s legislation avoids terms like “ban,” instead framing the legislation as an order for social media companies to create “safe digital spaces” for children.
Critics had no problem seeing an iron fist inside the rhetorical velvet glove, pointing out that Turkey is one of the world’s more censorious governments and has long experience with social media crackdowns. Recent examples include the tight social media restrictions imposed last year during protests by supporters of jailed Istanbul mayor and opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu.
Many news outlets pointed out the timing of Wednesday’s parliamentary vote one week after a school shooting in which a 14-year-old boy murdered nine students and a teacher in southern Turkey.
Police are reviewing the social media activity of the perpetrator, who died during the attack, possibly from suicide. According to one report, an image of California mass killer Elliot Rodger, who murdered six people with knives and guns before killing himself in 2014, was found in the Turkish student’s WhatsApp profile.
On the day before the deadly shooting in the town of Kahramanmaras, a 19-year-old former student burst into a high school in a different southern town and injured 16 people with a hunting rifle before killing himself.
Turkish officials have arrested at least 83 people for “glorifying crime and criminals” since the dual school shootings, banning over 1,000 social media accounts.
In a televised address on Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “We are living in a period where some digital sharing applications are corrupting our children’s minds and social media platforms have, to put it bluntly, become cesspools.”
Erdogan’s remarks suggest he will sign the bill into law, which he is required to do within 15 days.
Turkey’s Daily Sabah quoted various doctors and academics who stressed the importance of giving children time to develop their “identity,” learn “digital literacy skills,” and develop defenses against cyberbullying before they plunge into the social media maelstrom.
“The regulation is an important step to provide a protective barrier for them until they reach an age where they are ready in terms of development,” said Ankara University associate professor and children’s mental health expert Sadettin Burak Acikel.
