Late Wednesday, Turkish lawmakers passed a controversial new bill that would enforce sweeping restrictions on social media access for children younger than 15, marking the latest entry in a growing global policy push to shield minors from documented harms of unregulated online engagement. The vote came just seven days after a horrific gun attack at a southern Turkish middle school in Kahramanmaras, where a 14-year-old male perpetrator killed nine students and one teacher before dying himself. Turkish law enforcement is currently examining the shooter’s past online activity to identify potential motives for the violence, adding urgent political momentum to the regulatory proposal.
According to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu News Agency, the new legislation mandates that all major social media platforms operating within the country implement mandatory age-verification systems to stop underage users from creating new accounts, build integrated parental control tools for guardians to monitor and manage minor access, and respond quickly to takedown requests for content classified as harmful to young people. The rules also extend to online game companies, which are required to appoint a local in-country representative to ensure compliance with Turkish regulatory standards. Platforms that fail to meet these requirements face stiff penalties, including cuts to internet bandwidth and substantial fines issued by Turkey’s national communications watchdog.
The bill now moves to the desk of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has 15 days to sign the legislation into effect. Erdogan has already publicly voiced strong support for tighter online protections in the aftermath of the Kahramanmaras attack, arguing in a televised address just days before the vote that unmoderated digital platforms are eroding youth well-being. “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,” he told the public.
Not all political factions in Turkey back the new restrictions, however. The country’s main opposition bloc, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has issued sharp criticism of the policy, arguing that effective youth protection requires rights-centered policy frameworks rather than blanket access bans. The proposal also fits into a wider pattern of Turkish government regulation of online platforms that has drawn scrutiny in recent years. As social media has emerged as a key space for organizing anti-government dissent, the administration has implemented repeated access restrictions, including broad blackouts during 2023 mass protests supporting jailed Istanbul opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
Turkey’s new rule is far from an isolated policy. Around the world, governments are rolling out or considering similar age limits for social media use amid growing public concern over the impacts of unregulated content on adolescent development. Australia first implemented a ban on social media access for users under 16 in December 2023, where platforms moved to revoke access for roughly 4.7 million accounts confirmed to belong to underage users. Just last month, Indonesia enacted its own regulation barring minors under 16 from accessing digital platforms that could expose young people to cyberbullying, pornography, online scams, and problematic screen addiction. Several other European nations, including Spain, France, and the United Kingdom, are currently drafting or evaluating their own regulatory measures to limit underage exposure to harmful social media content.