My kid made a presentation for his class using Google Docs, then filled in his day of birth on his new phone when setting it up, then got locked out of his account. He was 12 at the time.

Also, his class had a WhatsApp group chat in which school info was shared. This was kind of weird because it meant that all 12 year olds in the group must have cheated their dates of birth, because otherwise they could not have had a WhatsApp account

Er, no. There is an actual privacy law with teeth if you're under 13 ("COPPA"). Companies don't want to be subject to any such regulation, so they choose to prohibit anyone under 13 from using their services. It's widely assumed that people under 13 simply work around these prohibitions by lying about their age, but as long as the companies don't have specific knowledge of this then legally everything is fine. Making the dropdown preclude ages under 13 could be interpreted as companies encouraging this behavior, and is thus a non-starter compliance wise.

No, That's expressly not allowed.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-co...

>If you choose to block children under 13 on your general audience site or service, you should take care to design your age screen in a manner that does not encourage children to falsify their ages to gain access to your site or service. Ask age information in a neutral manner at the point at which you invite visitors to provide personal information or to create a user ID.

>In designing a neutral age-screening mechanism, you should consider:

>Making sure the data entry point allows users to enter their age accurately. An example of a neutral age-screen would be a system that allows a user freely to enter month and year of birth. A site that includes a drop-down menu that only permits users to enter birth years making them 13 or older would not be considered a neutral age-screening mechanism since children cannot enter their correct ages on that site.

>Avoiding encouraging children to falsify their age information, for example, by stating that visitors under 13 cannot participate or should ask their parents before participating. In addition, simply including a check box stating, “I am over 12 years old” would not be considered a neutral age-screening mechanism.

I hear platforms ban < 13yo due to cost of compliance. Is this true? It was simple on Neopets when COPPA was new - just faxed a signed parental consent form so I could access the forums.

You're definitely allowed to use the internet but there are very strict rules on data collection. I think the intent is to keep people under 13 from using the internet socially or being exposed to the data collection/PR/ad machines.