Age restriction follows California's new child safety AI laws
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Overview
Updated 1 hour agoAnthropic has stopped letting people under 18 use Claude. The change, posted in the company's support documentation, makes the AI assistant adults-only.
The restriction lands one day after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 child safety bills, including the nation's first companion chatbot regulations. Anthropic's move is an early response to a regulatory wave that requires crisis protocols, parental controls, and independent safety audits.
Why it matters
If 18+ age gates become the industry norm, every major AI assistant will require age verification, and minors lose access to tools they already use.
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Timeline
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Anthropic bars minors from Claude
Today Policy ChangeAnthropic updates support documentation to require users to be 18 or older to access Claude.
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Newsom signs 13 child safety bills
LegislationCalifornia governor signs Adam's Law for companion chatbots and bans addictive social media features for under-16s.
Historical Context
3 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (1998)
Congress passed COPPA, requiring websites to get parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforced it with fines against major companies.
Websites added age gates and parental consent forms, and the FTC fined several companies for violations.
COPPA set the template for age-based online protections in the US and established 13 as the default threshold for children's data protection.
COPPA created the first age-gate mechanism for US online services. California's new laws extend that logic to AI chatbots and social media algorithms.
UK Online Safety Act (2023)
The UK required platforms to implement age verification for adult content and protect children from harmful material. The law created a new regulator, Ofcom, with enforcement powers.
Platforms began rolling out age checks, and Ofcom published draft codes of practice for compliance.
The law showed how age assurance requirements collide with privacy rules, a tension California's approach tries to solve by pushing verification into operating systems and app stores.
California's answer to the age verification problem, pushing the signal down to the OS and app store layer, is the approach platforms have been lobbying for.
Australia's social media ban for under-16s (2024)
Australia became the first country to ban social media for users under 16, requiring platforms to verify ages. The law passed with bipartisan support but left implementation details unresolved.
Platforms faced a deadline to implement age verification, with questions about how to do so without collecting excessive personal data.
The law became a reference point for other jurisdictions, including California, which adopted a similar age threshold for addictive features.
California's feed ban for under-16s goes further than Australia's approach, and both face the same unsolved problem: age assurance that works without breaking privacy.
