Turkey is the latest country to implement teen social media restrictions, with lawmakers passing a bill that will restrict access to social media platforms for children under 15.
As reported by AP News, lawmakers in Turkey voted on April 22 to support the bill, which will now be presented to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for final approval.
“The bill will force social media platforms to install age‑verification systems, provide parental control tools and require companies to rapidly respond to content deemed harmful,” AP News reported.
The bill goes a step further than Australia’s landmark under 16 social media ban, but will seemingly utilize the same parameters, with authorities in Turkey implementing laws that will punish platforms for non-compliance, though they won’t dictate which approach social platforms should use for age assurance.
Which is a flawed system, in that legal enforcement then comes down to what individual courts define as each platform’s best effort to comply with the law.
Indeed, within its three-month update on Australia’s teen social media ban, Australia’s eSafety Commission said that it had seen “poor practices by some platforms” in implementing the restrictions, and added that the question of what is reasonable in enforcing the law will complicate prosecution of any violations.
The eSafety Commission also said this “is ultimately a question for the courts to determine on the evidence in the context of the platform’s service, technological feasibility and the regulatory landscape.” This essentially punts responsibility onto another apparatus, and limits the blowback for its own regulations.
A more defined approach, with direct guidance on the system that each platform needs to implement, would set a clearer standard, and likely ensure greater compliance, but thus far, various proposals for enforcement seem more intent on enabling optional approaches.
At the same time, the three-month report into Australia’s teen social ban also showed that 70% of teens under the age of 16 were still accessing social media apps, and that the bans hadn’t caused any reduction in reports of harm to the eSafety Commissioner’s office.
As such, it could be argued that the first major trial of sweeping social media restrictions for teens is not working, and that other nations might want to hold off on similar implementation.
But Turkey, at least, is moving ahead, and various other nations are also considering their own teen social media bans. This comes despite evidence indicating that social media apps often have as many positive impacts on teens as negative.
The balance of evidence would seemingly suggest that more digital literacy education is likely a better approach, but sweeping bans, at least ostensibly, have more media impact.
As such, the actual results likely don’t have a lot of bearing on the implementation of similar teen bans.
