Claude cuts off underage users as Anthropic rolls out age checks
Claude is no longer available for minors
Anthropic has introduced age assurance on Claude, meaning the AI assistant is no longer available to minors. The support documentation outlines how the platform now verifies user age, a move that locks younger users out of one of the leading AI chatbots and raises familiar questions about privacy and access.
Claude is no longer available for minors.
- embedding-shape
Claude Executive: Damn, we hardly know who our users are, can't we just force them to say their full name or ban them?
Claude Product Manager: No, that'll piss people off too much, and sadly we can't just ask for ID either...
Claude Executive: There must be some way we can force people to link their government IDs with our platform so our analytics get better and more accurate?
Claude Product Manager: We could limit the platform to 18+ and use "Age Verification" as the reason for people to hand over IDs, seems other platforms had success with this approach
Claude Executive: And we hardly have any users younger than 18 anyway, go for it!
- PeterStuer
No AI assisted learning for you kiddo! But do not despair, we offer you a 10% discount coupon on your purchase of your teacher's 2026 edition textbook saving you $25! Just scan your eyeball here for future discounts and enter "ILoveClaude" at checkout.
- mayhemducks
Need we remind Anthropic of the 153 million drirvers licenses available for sale on the dark web thanks to a 3rd party ID verification service?
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selli...
The fact that Anthropic only receives a result, not the data itself, does not make me feel any better about this.
I really wish we could leave these types of decisions up to parents and parents only. Leave the companies and governments out of it.
- throwaw12
Good that we have Chinese models now, we can host anywhere and use as much as we like without age verification.
Also, what's the reason banning minors? Is AI bad for mental health? If so, should companies also ban them to prevent burnout of their employees?
- ssijak
So we get actual mega useful tech banned for minors before we get ultimate useless brain damaging tech (social networks) banned for minors.
- United857
I wonder why this isn't a problem for OpenAI, Google, Meta or SpaceX (they allow users 13 years or older with parental permission)
- Patient0
The date says May 18, 2026 - so this is four months old, right?
- scronkfinkle
I once heard someone suggest that this should be on the OS level and I'm slowly coming around to the idea. There should be some kind of OS level flag that can easily broadcast to products that a child is using the device. No ID verification required, the parent is responsible for setting it, and all downstream applications are regulated to respect it, If applicable to the product. This removes the incredibly invasive ID verification, and places responsibility on the people responsible for the minor. Companies like meta then can be sued not for failing to detect children (this is, evidently, not working on any platform trying to enforce this currently), but instead can be judged in a black and white manner (i.e. is the child version of meta too predatory to children?)
- planb
In Germany, this seems to be the case for a long time already. I'm not sure if that's really what happened, but a few months ago my son (who's 17) complained that Claude locked him out when he was discussion school work and mentioning his age in a conversation. I did not see the conversation, but I could verify that his account was indeed banned.
- whazor
I can understand the concerns but at the same time it feels weird to deny young people the ability to make their ideas reality. I got proper internet access when I was 12 and that is how I taught myself how to program.