Is Google Gemini Safe for a Young Child to Use on Your Phone

Google began giving children under 13 access to its Gemini AI chatbot by default, on any Android phone managed through Family Link, unless a parent specifically turns it off. On a phone that isn't managed through Family Link at all, a simpler version of the same problem shows up: a young child talking to Gemini through nothing more than the parent's own already-signed-in account.

Does Gemini have an age requirement?

Officially, yes, 13 or the applicable age in your country for a personal Google account. Google carved out a specific exception below that: a parent can enable Gemini access for a child under 13 through a Family Link-supervised account, which is a deliberate, documented option, not a loophole.

What does "available by default" actually mean for a supervised child account?

It means the setting starts on rather than off for many families, so a parent has to actively find it and turn it off if they don't want their supervised child using it, rather than opting in when they're ready. Google does send a notification the first time a child under 13 uses Gemini, but that notification arrives after the first conversation has already happened, not as a request for permission beforehand.

What if my child doesn't have their own Google account and just uses my phone?

Then none of the Family Link age-gate applies at all, since there's no supervised child account for it to attach to. A young child using a parent's own phone is simply talking to Gemini through the parent's own adult account, already signed in, with no age check in the path whatsoever. This is the same pattern that shows up across almost every age-gated feature on a shared phone: the check happens at the account level, and an account that was never set up as a child's account was never going to trigger it.

Does this only happen if my child deliberately opens a Gemini app?

No, and this is worth knowing specifically. Gemini also generates the AI Overviews that now appear at the top of most Google Search results, and there's currently no way to turn that off for an individual account. A child searching something completely ordinary, a school topic, a question about an animal, can still land on an AI-generated summary without ever opening anything called "Gemini" at all.

So what can I actually do about it?

If Gemini shows up as its own app on your phone, block it the same way as any other app, closing it the moment it's tapped. AI Overviews inside ordinary Search are a different, harder problem, since they're built into Search itself rather than a separate app, closer to the same category as a phone's built-in dialer: not something an app block reaches. Being aware that an AI-generated answer can appear during an entirely ordinary search is, realistically, the more useful takeaway than expecting a single setting to close every path.

The age gate exists. It just checks the account, and a phone shared with a parent usually doesn't have a child account for it to check.