The Turkish Language Association (TLA) announced Monday that it had selected "digital conscience" (dijital vicdan) as its word of the year for 2025.
According to the TDK, conscience means the feeling that compels a person to judge their own actions and reflect on moral values, adding that it has taken on a different dimension in the digital age.
"People often tend to 'ease their conscience' by sharing or liking posts on social media regarding issues for which they do not, or do not want to, take responsibility in real life. This situation passivizes individual sensitivity and reduces conscience to a 'clickable action'," the group said in a statement.
The association said internet users may feel they have fulfilled their "humanitarian duty" through likes, shares, and comments, limiting feelings of compassion and fairness to symbolic visibility.
"Therefore, the concept of 'digital conscience' should take its place in our language as a necessary concept that describes this new, often misleading function that conscience has taken on in the digital environment in our time," the statement said.
Digital conscience prevents people from producing concrete solutions in the face of reality, thus causing the problem area to expand and deepen, said the group.
Türkiye's Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said Monday on US social media company X that the word was chosen through public participation, with some 300,000 votes cast.
"'Digital conscience' stands out as a powerful concept that mirrors our individual and societal sensitivities," he underlined, adding that conscience in the digital age is being reduced to a mere "click."
Earlier Britain's Cambridge Dictionary chose "parasocial" as its word of the year for 2025, a word describing a connection that people form with someone they don't know, particularly with celebrities or influencers.
The Collins English Dictionary crowned "vibe coding" its top word of the year, drawing attention to a growing trend in artificial intelligence that transforms ordinary speech into working computer code.
The Oxford University Press chose "rage bait" as its word of this year, referring to "online content deliberately designed to elicit anger by being provocative," typically posted to attract more clicks.
