Children must have parental permission to use Google services, and parents who let their children use Google are agreeing to Google's terms on the child's behalf.
Strengthened parental obligations from responsibility for child's activity to explicit agreement to terms on behalf of the child; added reference to service-specific age requirements; elevated severity from medium to high.
View full change record →Parents who allow children under 13 to use Google services are legally accepting Google's terms on their behalf, and their children's data — including location, search history, and content — is subject to the same broad data use provisions as adult users.
Cross-platform context
See how other platforms handle Minimum Age Requirement (COPPA) and similar clauses.
Compare across platforms →This transfers legal consent obligations to parents, but does not describe how Google verifies parental consent or what data it collects from minors, raising COPPA compliance concerns.
REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: This provision directly implicates COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 6501–6506 and 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 parental consent for children under 16 (or lower age set by member states, minimum 13) for information society services. UK GDPR and the UK Age Appropriate Design Code (Children's Code, enforced by the ICO) impose additional requirements. EU GDPR Art. 6(1) lawful basis requirements apply to any processing of minors' data.
Compliance intelligence locked
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Watcher: regulatory citations. Professional: full compliance memo.