Turkey to Ban Under-15s from Social Media Accounts Starting November 1

Turkey's Cyber Security Presidency published a new regulation in the Official Gazette issue No. 33396 on October 10, 2026, Article 5 of which states that "a social media service provider may not provide its services to children under the age of fifteen." The regulation, based on the Turkish Internet Law, applies to local and foreign providers accessible from within Turkey, and comes into effect on November 1, 2026, 22 days after its publication.

Age verification will be conducted through the e-Government portal, where the user logs in with their ID, requests a code from a service affiliated with the Presidency, and uploads it to the platform, which verifies it. This code only indicates whether the user has reached the threshold of fifteen or eighteen, without any other personal data, and the platform may not use it for anything other than age verification. Temporary visitors are exempt from the verification mechanism, but they require an exceptional code issued based on passport data. Accounts of those under 15 may be closed after notification, and their data deleted if they do not object.

The regulation grants the 15-to-17 age group a separate experience: their accounts will be private by default and cannot be made public, follower lists will be visible only to the account holder, and they can only be messaged by accounts they follow. Live streaming and read receipts are prohibited, measures preventing screenshots are required, and video content cannot be displayed in a continuous feed via scrolling or tapping. Most importantly, the regulation prohibits personalizing accounts for this age group based on the child's behavior, and bans using their personal data for profiling or targeted commercial advertising.

The impact directly touches advertisers, as personalized advertising for minors loses one of its largest surfaces, noting that contextual advertising based on page content appears to be permitted, though excluding teen accounts requires separate age signals. Turkey follows Australia, whose ban on those under 16 took effect in December 2025, and France, which approved a ban on those under 15 in July 2026, with a key difference being that Turkey bases verification on a state-issued code, whereas Australia avoided relying on government ID.

What do these terms mean?

Official Gazette: The official state newspaper in which laws and regulations are published, becoming effective only after publication in it.

Age Verification: Ensuring that a user has reached a certain age limit before allowing them to use a service, rather than relying solely on their self-declared age.

e-Government Portal: An official government platform that citizens log into using their digital identity to access services, used here to issue a code proving their age threshold.

Personalised Advertising: Ads targeted to a user based on their behavior, data, and browsing history, rather than solely on the content of the page they are viewing.