So, my 14 year old's account got disabled by Google the other day...I guess there is a new rule where a child cannot have an unsupervised account? I don't recall really reading about this, and he has had this account since he was like 6 years old. My other son (12yo) isn't getting nagged about it yet.
At first I was just in an endless loop trying to follow their instructions, it would just try to sign him in, state the account was disabled, and then freeze and loop back I finally landed up changing his birthday to be younger than reality to wake it up and I now have him in my Google Family as a supervised account. But idiotically, this actually takes away abilities that he used to be able to do....namely create content on YouTube. There is no setting on the Parental controls to override this and they even state this as fact in their documentation. Why is this considered so dangerous, I rather him do something mildly creative than mindlessly just watching videos. Google will let me allow him to watch any content on Youtube or heck google search porn if I chose to.
So if he isn't supervised...his whole account will shut down and delete. Supervised, it's crippled. I tried to just change his birthday to just make him 18 but the they actually ask for ID. What are my options? I think I may just have to ditch the account and create a new one from scratch making him an adult from the start....I can't fathom Google is asking for ID on all new accounts now? But then he is going to lose all his Gmail history, profiles on third party applications that use his Gmail, and YT content/history. Or he'll just have to manage two accounts I guess.
On top of that, the process so far has corrupted his Android phone. I cannot get GMail or YouTube to even open....they flash up with a message like there is a sign in problem, then either crash out or go to a blank white screen. It's like it actually converted his account somehow under the hood and the phone profile didn't know how to deal with it. I tried rebooting and flushed all the application cache. You can't actually fully uninstall GMail or YouTube to reinstall...I did downgrade/upgrade. I think I may have to factory reset it....aggravating.
Just curious if anyone else has had to deal with this process. I wonder if I should do something with my other son's account proactively to maybe avoid this. I don't need Google to be a nanny. We do use Qustudio fwiw...which I also hate managing, but seems like the best of bad options.
At first I was just in an endless loop trying to follow their instructions, it would just try to sign him in, state the account was disabled, and then freeze and loop back I finally landed up changing his birthday to be younger than reality to wake it up and I now have him in my Google Family as a supervised account. But idiotically, this actually takes away abilities that he used to be able to do....namely create content on YouTube. There is no setting on the Parental controls to override this and they even state this as fact in their documentation. Why is this considered so dangerous, I rather him do something mildly creative than mindlessly just watching videos. Google will let me allow him to watch any content on Youtube or heck google search porn if I chose to.
So if he isn't supervised...his whole account will shut down and delete. Supervised, it's crippled. I tried to just change his birthday to just make him 18 but the they actually ask for ID. What are my options? I think I may just have to ditch the account and create a new one from scratch making him an adult from the start....I can't fathom Google is asking for ID on all new accounts now? But then he is going to lose all his Gmail history, profiles on third party applications that use his Gmail, and YT content/history. Or he'll just have to manage two accounts I guess.
On top of that, the process so far has corrupted his Android phone. I cannot get GMail or YouTube to even open....they flash up with a message like there is a sign in problem, then either crash out or go to a blank white screen. It's like it actually converted his account somehow under the hood and the phone profile didn't know how to deal with it. I tried rebooting and flushed all the application cache. You can't actually fully uninstall GMail or YouTube to reinstall...I did downgrade/upgrade. I think I may have to factory reset it....aggravating.
Just curious if anyone else has had to deal with this process. I wonder if I should do something with my other son's account proactively to maybe avoid this. I don't need Google to be a nanny. We do use Qustudio fwiw...which I also hate managing, but seems like the best of bad options.