By Prof. Dr. Osman Çakmak / Istanbul Rumeli University / President of the Maarif Platform
As the new academic year began, the familiar morning rush of preparing lunchboxes and walking children to school gate entrances was once again overshadowed by an atmosphere of deep anxiety. Following recent events, particularly reports emerging from Manisa, this academic calendar has increasingly taken on the heavy solemnity of a memorial ledger. The shadows of past tragedies still loom large over educational institutions across Turkey. On March 2, a fatal knife attack carried out by a high school student in Çekmeköy claimed the life of a dedicated teacher. Just weeks later, on April 14, an armed assault by a former student in Siverek left 16 people wounded. The very next day, a devastating shooting at a middle school in Kahramanmaraş resulted in the tragic deaths of eight students and one teacher, alongside 13 others sustaining injuries. That same day, heightened vigilance prevented another potential disaster in Tarsus, where a student attempting to enter school grounds with a firearm was intercepted at the last moment.
In the wake of each of these harrowing incidents, the public conversation inevitably revolves around the same recurring questions: Was there security at the door? Were the backpacks searched? While these inquiries are entirely understandable and necessary, they consistently bypass the core issue that demands our attention. Long before a child picks up a knife or smuggles a weapon into a school, how many thousands of times have they been conditioned by violence flickering across a digital screen? Metal detectors can successfully locate a hidden blade, but they are utterly powerless to detect or heal the profound internal void growing inside a child.
Recognizing this blind spot, the Maarif Platform—in collaboration with the Turkish Writers’ Union, the International Cinema Association, and other key institutional stakeholders—compiled a comprehensive study titled the "Virtual Siege and Media Crisis" report. The foundational premise of this research is stark: children are no longer being raised primarily by their schools or their families. While an educator might interact with a student for only a few hours a week, digital screens command an average of six hours of their daily lives every single day.
Sugar for Elves: The Illusion of Bans Without Alternatives
Scheduled policy interventions reflect a growing global urgency to address this digital saturation. Set to take effect on November 1, an impending social media ban targeting children under the age of 15 represents a significant legislative step. Australia implemented similar measures ahead of Turkey, and France is currently moving in a parallel direction. While this regulatory restriction is fundamentally well-placed, policymakers must recognize a basic psychological reality: if you take away a sweet treat from a child without offering an apple in return, they will simply seek out that sweetness elsewhere.
Millions of young people are facing the prospect of having several hours freed up in their daily routines. However, current legislative frameworks fail to outline—nor can they realistically dictate—how that newfound time will be filled. The inherent function of a law is to lock the front door, not to furnish and warm the room inside.
Extensive work has already been dedicated to diagnosing the symptoms of this crisis. Statistical institutions have measured digital consumption, parliamentary bodies have cataloged the rising risks, and specialized organizations like Yeşilay have conducted extensive fieldwork. Yet, despite these efforts, society is currently equipped with a sensitive thermometer rather than a functional medical diagnosis. A thermometer can accurately inform us that a fever has reached 40 degrees Celsius, but it cannot explain the underlying infection that caused the temperature to spike. Existing research frequently asks, "How many hours does the child spend in front of the screen?" but largely fails to investigate the deeper question: "Why are they there in the first place?"
The analytical model presented in the Maarif Platform’s new report fundamentally inverts the traditional cause-and-effect relationship. In conventional public discourse, the screen is often cast as the ultimate culprit. In contrast, our model frames the digital screen as an opportunistic occupier that quietly settles into a child’s pre-existing voids of identity, belonging, and existential meaning.
Just as an abandoned plot of urban land inevitably attracts refuse or unauthorized makeshift dwellings, the psychological vacuum in a young person’s life becomes fertile ground for ideological or behavioral extremes. Violence frequently emerges as one of these hastily constructed shelters. A young person whose voice goes unheard at home, and who feels invisible or insignificant in their daily social environment, frequently seeks and finds a fleeting sense of empowerment exclusively within the digital realm. In video games and online spaces, the hero is invariably armed, and characters who fall can be instantly reborn with the push of a button. By contrast, a teacher who collapses in a school corridor does not get a second life.
When observing two children playing the exact same violent video game, one may remain grounded because a supportive family anchors their reality, while the other drifts entirely alone in a state of emotional detachment. The decisive difference is not the digital device itself, but the living network of human relationships that surrounds the child.
This realization serves as an essential source of hope because human-made vacuums can be actively filled. Neighborhood sports facilities, community workshops, civil society initiatives, or meaningful causes do not need to forcibly tear a child away from a screen; rather, they can offer compelling offline alternatives that prove far more engaging than digital isolation.
Assigning Concrete Responsibilities to Every Institution
Public policy reports addressing youth crises frequently conclude with vague recommendations emphasizing that "institutions must work in close coordination." Yet an unaddressed letter inevitably remains tucked away inside a postal worker’s bag. A key distinction of the Maarif Platform report is that it assigns distinct, actionable responsibilities to individual public institutions rather than relying on generalized appeals.
The Ministry of Family and Social Services must transition parents away from acting merely as digital watchmen whose primary role is pulling the internet plug, transforming them instead into empathetic guides capable of sustaining meaningful dialogue with their children. Similarly, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) should operate less like an emergency firefighting unit issuing punitive fines and more like a cultural patron that actively incentivizes and rewards high-quality media production. The Ministry of Youth and Sports must expand accessible athletic spaces down to the immediate neighborhood level, while the Ministry of Culture and Tourism needs to actively reflect the core meaning of its foundational title.
Furthermore, additional institutions must critically examine their communicative approaches. The rhetorical language utilized by religious authorities requires comprehensive renewal, ensuring that the vast narrative of the universe is actively integrated into public addresses and sermons. Within the formal education system, the current curriculum creates a stark imbalance where a student might receive a single weekly hour of religious education contrasted with more than twenty hours of secular science courses.
If science textbooks continue to present the universe as an entirely self-generated phenomenon without a deliberate creator, the isolated hour of religious instruction will struggle to bridge the worldview gap. Describing the physical composition of the ink used to write a letter is a legitimate scientific endeavor, but concluding from that chemical analysis that "no author wrote the letter" is a logical failure. When one educational channel portrays the universe as devoid of an overarching purpose, and another portrays a purpose entirely detached from empirical reality, the widening intellectual space between them is rapidly colonized by digital screens.
Examining the Supply Side of Digital Content
Most current preventive measures remain exclusively focused on the demand side of the equation: protecting the child, limiting screen time, and verifying digital age limits. A vital contribution of the Maarif Platform report is its simultaneous focus on the supply side of the digital ecosystem: Who is producing this harmful content, and who is educating the individuals who create it?
Media industries that defend their output by claiming they merely sell what is commercially profitable resemble restaurant owners who refuse to include traditional, wholesome meals on their menus while falsely arguing that the public has lost its appetite for home-cooked food. Turkey stands among the world’s leading exporters of television dramas and cultural content. The missing element is not productive capacity, but a clearly defined cultural direction. Just as the exact same river current can be harnessed to turn a grain mill or devastate a village, the ultimate outcome is determined entirely by the engineering and direction of the riverbed itself.
Without the synchronized efforts of families, schools, religious institutions, local neighborhoods, and content producers gathering around a shared table, fragmented preventive measures will continue to fall short. The immediate next step for policymakers and educators is to systematically measure youth sentiment regarding belonging and purpose on the ground, integrating concrete budgets, realistic timelines, and verifiable performance indicators alongside future policy proposals.
Prohibiting a digital tool is inherently simple. However, a deeply entrenched behavioral habit can only be successfully replaced by fostering a superior, more fulfilling alternative. Society has not permanently lost its children; rather, the community must rediscover the authentic voice required to call them back. As the implementation date for new digital regulations approaches, the primary subject of discussion must move beyond the administrative mechanics of enforcement to focus squarely on what we intend to put in its place.
