Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Antalya, Turkey, on April 17.Umit Bektas/Reuters
Turkey this week passed legislation barring children younger than 15 from social media, joining a small but growing number of nations seeking to protect underage users from the potential harms of the online world.
The legislation, which the Turkish parliament passed on Wednesday, requires social media companies to ensure they do not provide services to underage users and to offer parental controls for online transactions. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to sign it into law.
Advocates for the law, including Erdogan and his governing Justice and Development Party, have said the measure aims to protect children from dangers like social media addiction, cyberbullying and exposure to violence, pornography and commercial exploitation.
“We are living in a period where some digital-sharing applications have violated our children’s minds and social media platforms have, to put it bluntly, become cesspools,” Erdogan said this week, before the vote.
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The measure, which will be carried out gradually, does not specify which platforms will be affected or detail how users’ ages will be verified. But Turkish officials have said the log-in process will require the use of an online portal run by the government.
The additional step has raised concerns among free-speech advocates that the new procedures will threaten online privacy and freedom of expression.
“Under the guise of protecting children, they are introducing a much more sinister system,” said Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University and co-founder of IFOD, a free-speech association.
Concern has risen in recent years among parents and governments about the effects of social media on children, including, advocates for greater restrictions say, declining attention spans, damaged self-esteem and vulnerability to online abuse.
In December, Australia unveiled the world’s first nationwide ban on social media for anyone younger than 16. Indonesia followed in March, and Malaysia is pursing a similar regulation. The French parliament is moving ahead on legislation to bar children younger than 15 from social media.
The Turkish government’s history of restricting or blocking internet sites has led critics to question whether the new law would be used to do more than protect children.
Turkey has repeatedly blocked access to YouTube and has at times effectively shut down Instagram and the platform X during protests or after terrorist attacks.