A children’s rights advocacy group in the United States is accusing Google of circumventing parental rights by allowing children to disable parental controls on Google accounts after they turn 13.
Melissa McKay, president of the Digital Childhood Institute, said on LinkedIn that Google sent her 12-year-old son an email that would unlock additional tools when he turned 13, and posted screenshots of the email.
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In Google’s FAQ, it indicates that children can disable tools that allow parents to supervise accounts when they meet the minimum age in their country, which is 13 in most countries.
Among the changes, once kids turn 13, they can turn off supervised experiences on YouTube and add payment methods to Google Pay. Parents will no longer be able to block apps, initiate location sharing without the child user’s permission, or block access to payment features.
“Google is asserting authority over a border that doesn’t belong to them. It turns parents into a temporary inconvenience and positions corporate platforms as the default replacement,” McKay said in a post on LinkedIn.
Parents up to age 13 can supervise Google accounts through a program called Family Link.
“In nearly ten years as an online security attorney, this is one of the most predatory corporate practices I’ve seen,” she added.
McKay first complained in October in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
“Enabling minors to end parental care at this critical stage of development, even when parents clearly seek to maintain such protections, is a clear breach of the duty of care,” McKay said in a letter shared with Al Jazeera.
McKay told Al Jazeera that she met with then-FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and spent 45 minutes with him and his staff before sending the letter.
The 50-page document alleges that the Silicon Valley tech company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a law that limits how tech companies can collect and use the personal data of children under 13.
The letter also alleges that in-app purchases violate the 2014 FTC Consent Decree, which requires platforms like Google to obtain parental permission before allowing such purchases by children.
Other parental rights activists echoed McKay’s concerns.
“Our concern is that messaging like Google’s — telling a 13-year-old that they can now remove parental supervision — sends a signal that parents are barriers to freedom rather than partners in growth. This kind of corporate language accelerates technological freedom without any built-in safety nets, education, or emotional preparation. We just have to think online. Because they’ve reached an unruly age,” said Joanne Ma, co-founder of DigiDefendr, which helps teach kids about safe practices online. A new platform that does, told Al Jazeera.
Representatives of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The FTC did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The Utah State Attorney General’s Office, the state where McKay is based, as well as Utah Senator Mike Lee, who has pushed for several age verification laws in the US – including social media use and access to explicit adult content – did not respond to requests for comment.
hazardous environment
Google has long been under the microscope for the relationship between children and teenagers and their slate of tools. A lawsuit in 2025 alleged that the tech giant extracted data from Chromebooks used by students for schoolwork in public school systems in the US. A second report in 2024 alleged that Google sales representatives advised potential advertisers on how to target teenagers on YouTube.
In 2019, the tech giant also settled a lawsuit with the New York State Attorney General for collecting personal data of children using YouTube. He paid a $136 million fine to the FTC and a $34 million fine to New York.
Even beyond the Google platform, the online landscape is an increasingly volatile place for children and teens, and 48 percent of teens report that their use of social media negatively affects their mental health, according to a Pew Research Center survey last year.
Cellphone and technology usage, especially among young people, increases with the increasing use of chatbots. chatgptOnline security experts are flashing warning signs. About 72 percent of US teenagers say they use ChatGPT, for example, and a report by the Center for Counting Digital Hate found that OpenAI-owned chatbots lack adequate safeguards such as age verification tools.
The report also assessed whether chatbots would encourage risky behaviors by creating personas with a tendency toward substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and eating disorders, with 53 percent of responses to prompts deemed harmful.
“Continuous parental supervision should be the default and not something that a child chooses. This is a decision that Google and other corporations need to make in their own policies. There needs to be some corporate responsibility, especially regarding youth mental health and how it relates to social media,” Tracy Parolin, DigiDefendr’s other co-founder, said.