Google Is Changing Its Account Policy About Minors Who Turn 13

If you have a family account through Google, you can assume that you can control what your child can see or do on their device. It is possible, but only up to a certain point. When your child turns 13, Google will send them an email letting them know they can choose to turn off your supervision on their account. You also receive an email, but they don’t need your permission to block you from accessing their device. Once they decide they’re ready for a relatively complete Google account experience, it’s up to them to make a choice.

Although this is Google’s official policy, this situation was not public knowledge. Following a relatively viral LinkedIn post on the subject, parents were irritated that Google would decide that their 13-year-old child was ready to be unsupervised on the Internet. Google’s Family Account allows children to get supervised plans after the age of 13, but they can choose to remove supervision at any time, which largely defeats the purpose. Unless your child Really respects your rules, chances are he won’t keep his account locked when he doesn’t have to.

Parents can still supervise the Google accounts of their 13-year-old children

Fortunately for parents, this is changing. In a separate LinkedIn post, Google’s Kate Charlet announced that, as part of a planned policy update, minors will need to get permission from their parents before turning off supervision. (Charlet also referred to age 13 as “the age of digital consent,” which strikes me as an extremely strange way of saying “old enough to have an unsupervised Google account.”)

When I contacted Google about the changes, the company told me the policy now needs to be adjusted. As such, 13-year-olds should not be able to remove their surveillance without permission. That said, Google’s support documents haven’t been updated yet, so the full rollout could take a while.

Speaking of Google’s old support documents, the company notes that when children chose to remove permissions, their device would temporarily freeze. When I asked Google about this, I was told that due to the policy change, device lock was no longer a feature. However, I still don’t understand how this feature worked when children could remove permissions themselves: did parents have to manually unlock the device for their children? Would the devices unlock after a set period of time? I contacted Google about these questions, although they may no longer matter once teenagers need their parents’ permission.

What does this mean for my child’s Google account?

As I explain in my article here, removing supervision takes a lot of control away from parents and gives teenagers a lot more responsibility. Parents can’t control screen time, manage payment cards and transactions, and can’t block regular YouTube in favor of YouTube Kids. Additionally, children can choose to stop sharing their location with you if they wish.

But now that parents have the power here, these controls can continue for your 13-year-old. If you want them to keep their location enabled, they won’t have the option to deactivate it; if you want to monitor their transactions, they can’t stop you; if you don’t want them to have a credit card, they won’t be able to add one, at least until you manually turn off monitoring on your end.

It’s a good thing that Google is giving families more options, and it joins other big tech companies, like Meta, that are doing the same.