Turkey Looks Set to Become Latest Country to Banish Kids From Social Media

Turkey has become the latest country to pass a bill that will ban social media for young people.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now has two weeks to accept the bill after the country’s parliament passed it on Wednesday.

The legislation will prevent children under the age of 15 from using social media and force tech companies to age-verify users, provide parental controls, and take down harmful content promptly.

The Associated Press reports that the bill comes one week after a 14-year-old boy attacked a middle school in southern Turkey, killing nine students and a teacher. President Erdogan singled out social media in the aftermath. Police are investigating the boy’s online activities.

“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 said earlier this week.

Turkey under Erdogan has banned social media platforms before: in 2024, the country blocked access to Instagram for a week without stating an official reason. Although reports indicated it was in response to the Meta platform censoring messages of condolence posts related to the death of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Engadget notes that Turkey has enacted bans on X/Twitter multiple times, including during the massive earthquake in 2023.

But the ban for children follows a similar trend for countries restricting social media, including Greece and Indonesia.

Australia banned social media for kids before anyone else, but it has accused tech firms of failing to enforce the national ban on users under 16 and allowing children to remain on their platforms.

The U.K. looks like it will follow Australia’s ban. In January, the House of Lords backed an amendment to the government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill supporting a ban on social media use for under-16s. France’s National Assembly has also approved legislation to ban social media use for children under 15. Meanwhile, in February, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez said that he plans to introduce a similar under-16 ban, while Denmark has said it will also move to ban social media use for children under 15. Other countries, including Norway, India, the Philippines, and Malaysia, are also considering similar measures.

Image credits: Header photo by Matt Growcoot.