Turkey to introduce restrictions on children's use of social media starting November 1
Restrictions on children's use of social media in Turkey will take effect on November 1.
As 1news.az reports, the corresponding regulation of the Cybersecurity Directorate under the administration of the president of Turkey was published on October 10 in the government gazette Resmi Gazete.
The document states that the restrictions take effect on November 1, 2026. Under the new rules, social networks will not be able to provide services to children under 15. For users between the ages of 15 and 18, platforms will have to create a separate mode with enhanced security and privacy protection measures. For accounts that have already been created and are active, age verification will need to be completed by March 31, 2027.
Users' ages will be verified through the nationwide e-Devlet public services system using a special identifier. Accounts of teenagers aged 15 to 18 will be private by default. Live broadcasts, personalized advertising, and certain content recommendation mechanisms will be prohibited for them. Social networks will also not be able to recommend other accounts to minors based on data collected about them, and the minors' own profiles cannot be suggested to other users.
In addition, requirements for protecting the personal data of underage users are being tightened. Social networks will not be able to synchronize children's accounts with phone books, contact lists, email address books, or friend and subscription lists in other applications and on other platforms. They are also prohibited from accessing such sources and processing data extracted from them.
Besides the restrictions for underage users, the regulation obliges social networks to create and provide parents and guardians with tools to control accounts, their settings, usage time, geolocation, paid transactions, and other functions.
