What a child's account actually holds

A parent who has set up Family Sharing, or a supervised Google Account, knows two things.

The child cannot install what the parent has not approved.

The parent can see what the child has installed.

Both statements are partly wrong.

The account holds data the parent has never seen, in places the configuration does not govern, and the platform exposes some of it to third parties without the parent signing off each time.

This page is about that data.

It does not replace the pages on how the age limit is set, what changes at the next birthday, or what a child can change in Family Sharing.

Those topics each have their own article.

It tries to answer a different question: what does the platform actually know about a child, who else gets to know it, and what is left after the parent changes the configuration.

Definition

A child account is a platform account that was created by a parent rather than by the child themselves.

Apple documents the creation flow under “Create an Apple Account for your child” [source: apple-child-account].

The account is attached to a Family Sharing group with the parent’s account as organiser [source: apple-family-kids].

Google documents the equivalent flow as a “supervised Google Account”, set up and managed through Family Link.

The supervision state is set at creation and is revisable only via Family Link [source: google-family-link-supervision].

In both cases, the parent’s authority over the account is set at the moment of creation, not negotiated later.

The child’s own authority — what they can change without asking — is also derived at creation, and again at each platform-relevant birthday.

That is the account. What this article describes is the data inside it.

Scope

This page covers five things, in this order:

1. What categories of data the platform stores on the child. This is set by the platform’s own privacy disclosures, not by the parent’s configuration [source: apple-parent-disclosure].
2. Who is allowed to see what. The platform, the parent, the child, and third-party apps each see different slices of the same account.
3. What propagates from the account to a service the parent has never touched. Apple’s Declared Age Range API is the documented mechanism; it is the highest-leverage privacy fact in this article.
4. What the configuration cannot remove. The age signal is forward-propagating. Family Sharing’s family-level services stop on exit, but the platform-level data is not erased.
5. Where the answer differs by country. The same account type behaves differently in different jurisdictions, and the platforms’ country lists do not agree.

It does not cover in detail how the age limit is set, what changes at the next birthday, or what a child can change in Family Sharing.

Those are covered by their own articles (accounts-age-limits-and-birthdays, family-sharing-what-a-child-can-change).

Why this matters

The age on a child account is no longer a value only the App Store sees.

Apple’s Declared Age Range API lets an app, with consent, ask the operating system for the user’s age range rather than asking the user directly [source: apple-declared-age-range] [source: apple-age-range-legal].

For the parent, this means a wrong birthdate set on day one can quietly govern services that were not configured by the parent, for the lifetime of the account.

The platform does not consult the parent before passing the value on [source: apple-age-range-legal] [source: apple-age-range-support].

The face is increasingly the credential.

Roblox made facial age estimation mandatory for chat access worldwide, with phased rollout in Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands starting in December 2025 and global in January 2026 [source: roblox-age-estimation].

The estimate is run by the vendor’s partner Persona, and brackets the user into one of six age bands.

The estimate, not the stated birthday, decides which bracket the child is sorted into at the next login.

The platform’s own statement of accuracy is approximately 1.4 years of mean absolute error [source: roblox-age-estimation] [claim: roblox-age-estimation].

The bracket boundaries sit at 13 and 16 — exactly where a margin of error of that size changes what the child is permitted to do.

The rest of this page is about the data flows the parent does not see in a typical setup, and the small set of places where the parent’s view of the account is genuinely incomplete.

What the platform stores on the child

Five categories of data, in the order the parent’s configuration touches them.

The age signal

The birthdate entered at signup is the source from which the platform derives every age-related behaviour [source: apple-region-rules] [source: google-supervision-13].

Apple’s Country-specific rules page documents how the birthdate is also used for the regional minimum-age threshold that defines a child account [source: apple-region-rules].

Google’s supervision page documents how the birthdate triggers the notification when the child reaches the local age, and the start of the supervision-continuation flow [source: google-supervision-13].

The signal is forward-propagating. See Declared Age Range below for where it goes next.

The account identifier

Every child account has an identifier the parent has not chosen — the email address or account name.

The platform uses it to link the child’s purchases, family group, screen-time data, and any subsequent logins to the same record.

Apple documents the identifier and its use across Family Sharing [source: apple-family-kids].

Google documents the supervised account identifier and its role in the family group [source: google-family-link-supervision].

The identifier is not, by itself, sensitive.

What makes it sensitive is that the platform uses it as the join key between the local Screen Time data, the purchase history, the parent’s configuration, and any future session on any device where the child signs in.

Activity data the platform sees

Three families of activity the platform records by default, before any parental-control configuration is added:

• App installations and in-app purchases. On iOS, App Store history and Apple In-App Purchase transactions are visible in the platform’s record. Apps installed through alternative marketplaces are not [source: apple-parental-controls] (see alternative-app-stores).
• Screen Time data. On iOS, “App & Website Activity” is recorded on the device. The parent can see it in their Screen Time family view; the platform’s role in retaining that data is what makes it auditable after the device is gone [source: apple-family-kids].
• Communication Safety events. Apple’s on-device nudity detection blurs images locally, without sending the media to Apple servers [source: apple-communication-safety]. The event record (a yes/no per image) is held by the platform. The parent does not receive an alert by design.

Family-level data

A child account is part of a family group, and the family group is itself a data record.

Apple documents the family-level data: shared subscriptions, locations, Find My, Apple Cash Family, Apple Watch for Kids, and shared photo albums, calendars, and reminders all live in the family record and stop on family-group exit [source: apple-family-leave].

Google documents the equivalent family-level state [source: google-family-link-supervision].

This data is shared by default with the family group.

It stops being shared the moment the family group ends — at age 18 in most countries, or earlier if a child leaves the group on a platform that lets them.

The age signal that travels with the account

Apple’s Declared Age Range API is the documented mechanism through which an app, with consent, asks the operating system for the user’s age range.

Two points distinguish this from the ordinary prompt a child sees in an app:

• It is a system service, not an in-app form. The app does not see the date of birth. The app receives a category (under-13, 13–17, adult), depending on what the parent has authorised [source: apple-declared-age-range] [source: apple-age-range-support].
• It is configured once. The parent sets the age range in Family Sharing, not in each app. The app receives what the configuration gives [source: apple-age-range-support].

For a parent, the consequence is structural: a wrong birthdate set on day one propagates to every age-gated app the child tries, not just to the App Store.

The Apple documentation explicitly notes that this signal is the mechanism through which Australia, Brazil, and Singapore’s adult-gate for 18+ app downloads operates from 24 February 2026, and that US state-level enforcement in Utah and Louisiana is implemented through the same channel [source: apple-dev-age-requirements] [claim: www-biometricupdate-declared-age] (the developer pages are the primary source; the secondary reporting is used here only as a routing clue).

Who sees what

The same account has a different view from each of four seats.

The platform

Apple documents, in its Family Privacy Disclosure for Children, what it collects from a child account and what it does with it [source: apple-parent-disclosure].

Google documents the equivalent Family-side disclosures.

Both disclosures are written by the platform, for the regulator and the parent.

They are the authoritative source for what the platform retains. They are not an independent audit.

The parent (family organizer / family manager)

The parent’s view depends on the family’s current configuration.

On Apple, the parent sees what the family group exposes: shared purchases, locations, Find My, and on-device Screen Time if it has been enabled [source: apple-family-kids].

On Google, the parent sees what Family Link exposes: app installs, screen time, location (if enabled), and purchase approvals [source: google-family-link-supervision].

Things the parent’s view does not include:

• The age category passed to third-party apps via Declared Age Range. The parent configures the category, but the parent’s view does not show which app requested it for what purpose [source: apple-declared-age-range].
• Communication Safety events. Apple’s on-device nudity detection is designed not to alert the parent [source: apple-communication-safety].
• Content of end-to-end encrypted messages. No platform-side tool reads inside Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage, or any other end-to-end encrypted messenger. Even with full parental configuration on the device, the parent’s view stops at the messenger’s metadata.

The child

The child sees the account through the same Settings app on the device, with whatever the configuration permits.

The child does not, by default, see the family-level data shared with the parent: locations of siblings, the parent’s purchase history, or the parent-side configuration panels.

The child can, by default, see what their birthdate is on file.

The same date is what Apple’s regional minimum-age computation uses [source: apple-region-rules].

Third-party apps

Two routes exist for an app to learn something about the child through the platform, rather than asking the child directly.

• Declared Age Range API. The app requests an age category. With parental consent, the OS returns it; without, the OS rejects the request [source: apple-declared-age-range].
• Family Link permission grants. On Android, an app the child installs can request permissions that the parent has separately approved through Family Link [source: google-family-link-supervision].

The data that flows over these routes is what makes the platform the privacy boundary, not the device.

The device is a delivery mechanism.

What the configuration cannot remove

Several data flows survive any single configuration change. They are properties of the account, not features of the parental control.

The age category before any app saw it

A wrong birthdate set on day one propagates to every age-gated app the child tries later.

Apple’s own documentation treats the birthdate as the source for both the App Store rating ceiling and the Declared Age Range category [source: apple-region-rules] [source: apple-declared-age-range].

The platform’s record of what was installed

Even when Screen Time is off, the App Store retains a transaction record.

On Apple, the purchase history is on the Apple Account, not on the device, and survives a device reset [source: apple-family-kids].

The face, when facial age estimation is in scope

Roblox’s global facial age estimation runs at next login and re-bins the user.

The estimate is not configurable and is not auditable by the parent [source: roblox-age-estimation] [claim: roblox-age-estimation].

A child turning 13 on the calendar, but estimated as under 9, is in the under-9 bracket for chat purposes.

The mechanism’s stated mean absolute error is approximately 1.4 years, and the bracket boundaries sit at 13 and 16 — the two ages that determine what chat surfaces and contact lists the child can use [source: roblox-age-estimation].

The face, in this design, is the credential the platform keeps using. The birthday is the credential the parent knows about.

The platform’s account-recovery anchor

Even on a child account, the platform’s account recovery is anchored to the parent’s credentials.

The Screen Time passcode recovery, the Apple ID re-authentication, the Family Link parent-side override — all rely on the parent’s account still holding.

The parent’s credentials are the load-bearing identity for the child account’s recovery, and the platform does not ask the child for consent to that anchor [source: apple-region-rules] [source: apple-family-kids].

What changes at supervision end or at the birthday

Three transitions matter, and each changes what the parent sees.

• At the local age. The platform notifies parent and child. Family Link supervision becomes opt-in for the child, not enforced by the platform [source: google-supervision-13] [source: google-family-link-supervision-add]. Apple applies the same pattern at the device’s regional minimum age [source: apple-family-kids].
• On family-group exit. The shared services stop. Apple lists them in plain language: shared purchases, locations, Find My, Apple Cash Family, Apple Watch for Kids, shared photo albums, calendars, and reminders [source: apple-family-leave].
• At 18. Family membership does not end on the birthday in most platforms, but the parent’s automatic authority over the account does [source: apple-family-kids] [source: google-family-link-supervision-add].

What does not change at any of those points:

• The platform’s record of the child’s birthdate. It is not erased.
• The age category passed via Declared Age Range. It is per- session, not per-age.
• The Roblox face-estimation bin. It re-evaluates at next login.

The single sentence version: supervision ends; the account does not.

Country differences — the same account behaves differently

Jurisdiction note. This section is jurisdictionally bound. > The per-country answers live in their own per-country articles, > not here.

Per ADR-0003 (docs/decisions/0003-localization-classes-and-jurisdiction-axis.md in the repository), > lang and jurisdiction are two axes.

ADR-0003 docs: every > jurisdiction gets its own original page.

The platforms’ own country lists do not agree. This is documented in the open research and confirmed by both platforms’ help pages.

GDPR Article 8 sets the default age of digital consent at 16 in the European Economic Area, with the option for member states to lower it, “provided that such lower age is not below 13 years” [source: euconsent-gdpr-art8].

A small number of concrete illustrations, fetched from the platforms’ own help pages in August 2026, show how the same account class produces different behaviour at the same birthdate in different countries:

• Germany. Google documents the minimum age at 16 [source: google-age-requirements].
• Austria. Google documents the minimum age at 14 [source: google-age-requirements].
• Switzerland. Switzerland is not listed on Google’s country table. The default applies: 13 [source: google-age-requirements].

Apple documents analogous per-country thresholds for child accounts, but with a different table that does not match Google’s in every detail.

Denmark and Serbia appear on Google’s list but not on Apple’s.

Liechtenstein and Kosovo appear on Apple’s but not on Google’s.

The disagreement is real and unresolved on the pages reviewed for this article [source: apple-region-rules] [source: google-age-requirements].

For each country this wiki covers, there is a per-country page that names the law and the value.

Those pages are jurisdictional — localization: jurisdictional per ADR-0003 — and are not auto-translated:

• age-of-digital-consent-de
• age-of-digital-consent-at
• age-of-digital-consent-ch
• age-of-digital-consent-uk
• age-of-digital-consent-us

The full article on age limits and birthdays walks through the mechanics accounts-age-limits-and-birthdays.

For US state-level enforcement of age assurance on the App Store (Utah from 2026-05-06, Louisiana from 2026-07-01), the relevant page is us-state-age-verification-laws [source: apple-dev-age-requirements].

For UK-specific age-assurance regulation, the report Ofcom published in 2026 documents the trajectory: age checks per child on UK services rose from 25 % to 43 % between July 2025 and January 2026, with over 69 million checks across 32 services in the second half of 2025 [source: ofcom-age-assurance-2026].

The headline below the headline: the platforms themselves do not agree on the country list.

A parent who lives in or moves between countries needs to look up the value that applies where the account is held, not the value that applies to the language they read.

What the parent’s configuration cannot undo

Three limitations that no setting can change, and that the previous section of this page already implies.

They are gathered here for the reader who is scanning for what to plan around.

• The age category travels forward. A wrong date set on day one is a wrong category at every later app.
• The face is the new birthday. A child on Roblox is re-binned by the next login’s face estimation. The calendar age is not consulted.
• The family-group exit is irreversible from the family side. Apple documents that the child can be re-invited, but the configuration — Ask to Buy, Screen Time, shared purchases — has to be re-done from scratch [source: apple-family-leave]. The article on what a child can change names the conditions under which the exit is legal — see family-sharing-what-a-child-can-change.

A child account, in other words, is not a temporary configuration.

It is a record that the platform keeps for longer than the parent typically expects, and that travels further than the configuration that produced it.

Talking about it

A child who sees the family-level data held by a Family Sharing group is, in most cases, seeing it for the first time on the family settings screen.

A conversation that names what is held, before the child sees it elsewhere, is the only one that lands.

Three short habits help.

• Name what the platform tells you it keeps. Apple’s Family Privacy Disclosure for Children, and the equivalent Google’s Family-side disclosures, are written for the regulator and the parent, not the child [source: apple-parent-disclosure]. A family conversation that starts from the disclosure rather than from a guess is more honest.
• Name what the parent cannot see. Communication Safety on iOS does not alert the parent by design [source: apple-communication-safety]. Roblox’s facial age estimation re-bins the child at next login, without parent audit [source: roblox-age-estimation]. A family that pretends these are visible to the parent is a family that is surprised later.
• Name what a wrong birthdate does. A wrong value set on day one propagates via Declared Age Range. The platform does not ask again [source: apple-declared-age-range]. The fix is at signup, not at any later point.

The point of naming what the account holds is not to frighten.

It is to make the conversation possible in the first place.

A setting the child does not know about is a setting the parent will be told about only at the moment it misfires.

Sources

• apple-parent-disclosure — Apple, “Family Privacy Disclosure for Children”. The platform’s own disclosure of what is collected from a child account [source: apple-parent-disclosure].
• apple-age-range-legal — Apple legal, “Age Range for Apps & Privacy”. Apple’s framing of the age-range signal as a privacy surface [source: apple-age-range-legal].
• apple-age-range-support — Apple Support, “Share your age range with apps”. The parent and child controls for the Declared Age Range category [source: apple-age-range-support].
• apple-declared-age-range — Apple Developer Documentation, “Declared Age Range”. The API, consent model, and the one-way direction of the signal [source: apple-declared-age-range].
• apple-region-rules — Apple Support, “Region-specific rules for managing an Apple Account”. The country thresholds, the account-recovery anchor, and the per-country differences [source: apple-region-rules].
• apple-child-account — Apple Support, “Create an Apple Account for your child”. The account-creation flow, the parent-as-organiser anchor, the family group attachment [source: apple-child-account].
• apple-family-kids — Apple Support, “Family Sharing overview for kids and teens”. The family-level data the parent sees, and the 18-year non-transition [source: apple-family-kids].
• apple-communication-safety — Apple Support, “Communication Safety”. The on-device, no-parent-alert design [source: apple-communication-safety].
• apple-family-leave — Apple Support, “How to leave or remove a member from a Family Sharing group”. The catalogue of family services that stop on exit [source: apple-family-leave].
• google-supervision-13 — Google Families Help, “How Google Accounts work when children turn 13”. The supervision-continuation flow and the parent-notification pattern [source: google-supervision-13].
• google-family-link-supervision-add — Google Help, “Add & manage supervision on a current Google Account”. The parent-approval requirement for under-18 and the 24-hour lockout [source: google-family-link-supervision-add].
• google-family-link-supervision — Google Families Help, “Set up supervision to continue using your Google Account”. The supervision state at creation and the family- manager configuration surface [source: google-family-link-supervision].
• roblox-age-estimation — Roblox, “Facial Age Estimation for Safer Chat”. The vendor’s own description of the global facial age estimation system and its age brackets [claim: roblox-age-estimation].
• ofcom-age-assurance-2026 — Ofcom, “Use of Age Assurance Report 2026”. The UK statutory evidence on the volume and type of age checks performed on children [source: ofcom-age-assurance-2026].
• consumer-ftc-parental-controls — U.S. FTC, “How To Use Parental Controls To Keep Your Kid Safer Online”. The periodic re-review framing and the one-layer-of-protection framing [source: consumer-ftc-parental-controls].

[source: apple-parent-disclosure] [source: apple-age-range-legal] [source: apple-age-range-support] [source: apple-declared-age-range] [source: apple-region-rules] [source: apple-child-account] [source: apple-family-kids] [source: apple-communication-safety] [source: apple-family-leave] [source: google-supervision-13] [source: google-family-link-supervision-add] [source: google-family-link-supervision] [source: roblox-age-estimation] [source: ofcom-age-assurance-2026] [source: consumer-ftc-parental-controls]