Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Saturday announced that the video-hosting service Tik-Tok will be shut down for one year following concerns that it incites violence and bullying in schools.

Prime Minister Edi Rama stated that during the year, his government will monitor the reaction from other countries and the platform itself regarding regulations and filters for its content.

Earlier in November, in response to the fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old by a peer near the “Fan Noli” school, Rama warned of a potential shutdown of both TikTok and SnapChat, labeling the lack of content filters as dangerous for younger generations.

In November, a 14-year-old student lost his life after being stabbed in a fight with his peers near his school, causing a huge uproar in the country and several days of protests in front of the Ministry of Education. The police initially accused the murderer of “intentional murder” and “illegal possession of cold weapons.” Still, they later reclassified it as “murder under qualifying circumstances”, which could potentially lead to a sentence of life imprisonment.

Gazment Bardhi, the chairman of the parliamentary group of the opposition Democratic Party reacted to Rama’s decision, stating that he is “neither manager nor responsible for Tik-Tok and social networks.” According to Bardhi, real issues stem from the decline of education due to Rama’s poor governance, and attributing the blame to social networks is a “misdirection”.

The culture of peer-to-peer violence in Albanian schools is not new, however, nor is it confined to the country. According to a survey conducted by Balkan Insight across ten Balkan countries in 2023, a significant percentage of children in the region face peer violence, with 84.2% of parents reporting that their children have been exposed to physical violence and that 89.5% of the perpetrators were classmates.