Should all forums be age restricted ?

I don't think all forums should, it should be up to the discretion of the site owner with their niche taken into account. There's no age restriction on my forum but we do have COPPA. To date we've only had one of the forms sent into us, a 12 year old member. They ended up not really participating in the forum anyways.
 
It depends, I think they should all use COPPA really but in some cases a 13 age restriction is much easier.
 
All good points. Interesting to see how many are aware of COPPA.
 
Under US law you have to use COPPA or restrict under 13 year olds, but I'm from the UK so I don't use COPPA and with MyBB I cannot add an age restriction without using COPPA, so I rely on honestly and Terms of Use 😛
 
As long as the person is 13, I really don't see why they cannot be on the forum as long as they fit in with the rest of the community.
 
Family oriented forums shouldn't have an age restriction, but to make up for it, foul language should be either banned or at least covered up.
 
I think age restrictions should be applied thematically. I wouldnt be comfortable knowing that there are underage people visiting forums that use very strong and foul language. At the same time, forums about book, popular events, music...I dont see why not?
 
Depends on your niche, for general forums there should be no age restrictions.
 
I've said this somewhere before, but honestly, even if we didn't need COPPA, we'd still put a 13 age restriction on the forum. There's less chance of this happening on smaller sites like Sakuga City, but sites like our previous one that had many sign-ups a day, we had to be vigilant of paedophiles. Anime sites and anything that's inclined to appeal to kids will attract this kind of person. We did find a few and had to report them to the authorities. There was a 36 year old grooming a 13 year old girl. She was a bit innocent for her age. That was dealt with appropriately. Anyone found to have lied on sign up about their age was banned from the site until they were 13. It might mean that they never came back, but they aren't our responsibility, especially when even at 13, sometimes a kid isn't mature enough to tell admins if someone is being creepy.

I take things like this VERY seriously and would rather not have to deal with it.
 
depends on the site that you have. Yeah you need to have age level if you running an site with naked hot girls 😛

I tend to keep above 13 but I have two members that are under that age and very good indeed.
 
It's a shame that kids might be exposed to foul language etc. on forums that are lazy about age restrictions or even monitoring bad language.
 
You think little kids are the worst? Try the really annoying grownups that have done more damage over time to my board. They are the worst. To be honest, I think it depends on the subject matter as to what the age restrictions should be. And besides, if a kid wants to get on a forum, they normally just lie. COPPA doesn't work.
 
Dylan said:
Tell me what you think !
Have your views changed ?
Click to expand...
With this new GDPR! I say it doesn't chnage. It comes down to what the site is about. Yes if it was an adult site.
 
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