Turkey edges towards curbing social media access to minors amid global push

Turkey is laying the groundwork to restrict social media access for minors with a parliamentary report this week calling for broad measures including age verification and content filtering, joining a growing list of countries seeking tighter controls.

President Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AK Party is expected to submit a draft law on the issue soon and Family and Social Services Minister Mahinur Ozdemir Goktas told reporters after a cabinet meeting last month that the bill would include a social media ban for minors and compel service providers to build content-filtering systems.

The wide-ranging recommendations in this week's commission report also include the removal of content without notice and the monitoring of kids' video games or toys with AI functionality for harmful content.

Australia in December became the world's first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking them from platforms including TikTok, Alphabet's GOOGL.O YouTube and Meta's META.O Instagram and Facebook.

Spain wants to prohibit social media for under-16s, while Greece and Slovenia are working on a similar ban amid mounting concerns over its impact on children's health and safety. France, Britain and Germany are also considering restrictions for minors.

REPORT RECOMMENDS NIGHT-TIME RESTRICTIONS

The Turkish parliamentary report further recommends night-time internet restrictions for devices used by minors under 18, mandatory content filtration on social media until aged 18 and a social media ban until aged 16.

"We need to protect our kids from moral erosion. We aim to protect our children from all types of addictions, including digital ones," Harun Mertoglu, senior AKP lawmaker and a member of parliament's human rights enquiry committee, told Reuters.

Some parents echo the sentiment. Shopkeeper Belma Kececioglu said her 10-year-old spends hours on social media and playing games. 

"It is like all the kids are social media addicts. We are already troubled by this and it gets even worse with harmful content," Kececioglu said, as her son played a game on his phone after school. 

Social media companies have warned that bans on minors risk being undermined by weak age‑verification technology and could push children onto unregulated platforms.

Turkey already regulates social media companies heavily and is quick to impose takedowns and access bans. It currently bans access to 1.2 million web pages and social media posts as of end-2024, according to a report by local censorship watchdog IFOD.

Current regulations require companies to process official or user requests within two days, leaving little room for due process, and compel operators to conform to almost all takedown requests. Social media companies that don't conform to regulations may face advertisement bans, bandwidth reduction and fines up to 3% of global revenues.

Gaming platform Roblox, Discord and story-sharing site Wattpad have been banned in Turkey since 2024. Turkey had also banned Wikipedia for around three years.