You must be old enough in your country to form a legal contract to use Google services; for most users this means being at least 13 years old, and users under 13 must have parental consent and use a supervised account.
Children under 13 cannot legally create independent Google accounts and use of Google services without parental consent may result in the collection of children's personal data without the legal protections required by COPPA, including parental rights to review and delete that data.
Cross-platform context
See how other platforms handle Age Restriction and Parental Consent (COPPA) and similar clauses.
Compare across platforms →Google's services collect significant amounts of personal data, and COPPA requires special protections for children under 13 — if a child uses Google without proper parental consent, both the child and the parent may unknowingly expose sensitive data without the legal protections that should apply.
REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: This provision directly implicates COPPA (15 U.S.C. §6501 et seq.; 16 CFR Part 312), enforced by the FTC, which requires verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13. GDPR Art. 8 requires member state-defined age of digital consent (ranging from 13 to 16 across the EU) with parental consent required below that age. The UK Age Appropriate Design Code (Children's Code) under the UK GDPR imposes additional requirements on services likely to be accessed by minors under 18. The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (CAADCA, AB 2273) imposes design and data minimization obligations for services likely to be accessed by minors in California.
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