Lawmakers pass bill to require social media platforms to introduce age-verification tools and control mechanisms.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 23 Apr 2026<\/span>23 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Turkish MPs have passed a bill that includes restricting access to social media platforms for children under 15, according to state media.<\/p>\n The legislation is the latest in a global trend aimed at protecting young people from dangerous online activity, following in the footsteps of Australia, which introduced landmark restrictions on social media use last year.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The bill\u2019s adoption in Turkiye comes a week after a 14-year-old boy killed nine students and a teacher in a gun attack at a middle school in Kahramanmaras in southern Turkiye.<\/p>\n Police are investigating the online activity of the perpetrator, who also died, in a bid to uncover his motivation for the attack.<\/p>\n The bill would force social media platforms to install age\u2011verification systems, provide parental control tools and require companies to rapidly respond to content deemed harmful, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.<\/p>\n President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now has 15 days to approve the bill for it to become law. He spoke in the wake of the Kahramanmaras killings of the need to mitigate the online risks to children\u2019s safety and privacy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are living in a period where some digital sharing applications are corrupting our children\u2019s minds, and social media platforms have, to put it bluntly, become cesspools,\u201d he said in a televised address on Monday.<\/p>\n The main opposition Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP) has criticised the proposal, saying children should be protected \u201cnot with bans but with rights-based policies\u201d.<\/p>\n Under the law, digital platforms \u2013 such as YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram \u2013 would have to block children under 15 from opening accounts and introduce parental controls that would manage children\u2019s access.<\/p>\n Online gaming companies will also be required to appoint a representative in Turkiye to ensure they abide by the new regulations. Potential penalties include internet bandwidth reductions and fines imposed by Turkiye\u2019s communications watchdog.<\/p>\n The Turkish government has been criticised by the opposition for restricting online platforms when used as a means of expressing dissent.<\/p>\n Online communications were widely restricted during last year\u2019s protests in support of Istanbul\u2019s jailed opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.<\/p>\n Restrictions on social media access for children under 16 first began in December in Australia, where social media companies revoked access to about 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children.<\/p>\n Last month, Indonesia began implementing a new government regulation banning children younger than 16 from access to digital platforms that could expose them to pornography, cyberbullying, online scams and addiction.<\/p>\n Other countries \u2013 including Spain, France and the United Kingdom \u2013 are also taking or considering measures to restrict children\u2019s access to social media amid growing concern that they are being harmed by exposure to unregulated social media content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lawmakers pass bill to require social media platforms to introduce age-verification tools and control mechanisms. Published On 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026 Turkish MPs have passed a bill that includes restricting access to social media platforms for children under 15, according to state media. The legislation is the latest in a global trend aimed at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2017-06-08T131939Z_1189275883_RC11B0FE7F20_RTRMADP_3_GULF-QATAR-JAZEERA-1714943623.jpg?resize=96%2C96&quality=80)
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