Last year Apple introduced child accounts, so that children under the age of 13 could have Apple IDs without having to lie about their age. This was a sensible move! However, it left those of us who had already made an account for a child (by lying about their age) a bit in the lurch, since there was no official migration support. In fact, there’s even a bunch of advice out there saying that there’s no way to do it without making a new ID for the child.
I don’t know if this has changed, or if it’s been possible all along, but today I worked out the hoops to jump through to turn an existing “adult” Apple ID into a “child” Apple ID associated with your family.
- Invite your child’s Apple ID to your family. They’ll join as an adult, with full “buying stuff” powers, but this is very temporary.
- Sign in to your child’s Apple ID.
- Go to “Password and Security”.
- Update the birthday to your child’s real birthday.
- Apple will send an email to you, as the family-organizer, asking you to approve turning this account into a child-account which cannot leave your family until it’s 13.
- If you only have a debit card on your account, you may have to add a credit card while you approve the child-account.
- Enjoy your child’s newfound ability to make popups appear on your phone asking if they can buy an app.
This may have been driven by my getting an iPhone 6s, and the chain of device hand-me-downs resulting in my six year old daughter now having a device which can actually use family sharing…
Since Apple haven’t proven they can successfully allow a child account gain full independence when said child turns 18 (or 21 or 25 or 16, depending on jurisdiction and circumstances), it still might be best to create a specific child account. That’s why we have domains after all. 😉
Plus generic family child accounts mean you can conceal things like their number and age range, gender, etc. What business is any of that of Apple, Amazon or any other corporation?