Regulation on the Provision of Child-Specific Differentiated Services and Age Verification by Social Network Providers Published
The Regulation on the Provision of Child-Specific Differentiated Services and Age Verification by Social Network Providers (Regulation), prepared by the Presidential Cyber Security Directorate, was published in the Official Gazette dated October 10, 2026 and numbered 33396. The Regulation, which will enter into force on November 1, 2026, sets out the obligations of domestic and foreign social network providers accessible from Türkiye concerning age verification, the provision of child-specific differentiated services, parental control tools, and application and objection mechanisms.
The key provisions of the Regulation are summarized below:
- Domestic and foreign social network providers accessible from Türkiye may not provide services to children under the age of fifteen and must provide children aged between fifteen and eighteen with differentiated services appropriate to their age and development.
- Age verification is carried out at the account creation stage using an age verification token generated through the e-Devlet Gateway, which indicates only whether the user meets the age thresholds of fifteen and eighteen.
- Account creation requests from children found to be under the age of fifteen following age verification are rejected. Accounts reasonably suspected of being used inconsistently with their age range during the provision of the service are suspended until age verification is carried out again.
- Child accounts are private and cannot be made public; only users the child follows may send messages to these accounts. Children may not be given access to live-streaming, and content may not be presented sequentially through scrolling or autoplay. Child accounts may not be matched with contact lists or recommended for other users to follow, and children’s personal data may not be used for profiling or personalized advertising.
- Social network providers must provide parental control tools for managing spending, usage time, and account settings, as well as a free objection mechanism subject to human review.
- In case of non-compliance, social network providers are granted a reasonable period to remedy the breach; if the breach is not remedied, the sanctions set out in Additional Article 4 of Law No. 5651 on the Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Combating Crimes Committed through Such Publications apply.
- Existing accounts are subject to age verification by March 31, 2027. Accounts belonging to children under the age of fifteen are closed, without prejudice to their rights to submit applications and objections. Accounts belonging to children aged fifteen or older are subject to the differentiated service requirements.
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