Our curriculum is solely geared towards adult learners. Per our Terms of Service, children under 13 are not allowed to study on Chatterbug. What should you do if you meet an underaged student in a lesson?
Regulations
We want to provide a platform that’s adapted to their needs and fully complies with the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) before we open Chatterbug to children. Until then, we will suspend any Chatterbug account created by and for young learners until we can verify that they are 13 and older or until we have the official consent of their parents. This procedure is based on our Terms of Service.
If you meet a minor in your lesson
If you happen to be confronted with a young user in a Live Lesson and suspect that they could be younger than 13, please ask them immediately how old they are. Please mind, that especially Trial Lesson Students can turn out to be kids. In any case, you will need to send us a short message with the username of the student via the yellow chatbox.
If they are younger than 13
- Tell them in a friendly way, that kids are not allowed to study at Chatterbug.
- End the lesson via the “End Lesson Early” button. You will be paid for the lesson nonetheless!
- Contact us via the yellow chat symbol on the dashboard immediately and let us know the username of the child. Our Customer Support Team will contact them.
- If you want to remind the user of our Terms of Service to explain why you have to end the lesson, you can copy-paste the following paragraph into the chat window:
Chatterbug Terms of Service: Terms of Service - Chatterbug
“Your Registration Obligations: (…) If you choose to register for the Service, you agree to provide and maintain true, accurate, current, and complete information about yourself as prompted by the Service’s registration form. Registration data and certain other information about you are governed by our Privacy Policy. If you are under 13 years of age, you are not authorized to use the Service, with or without registering. In addition, if you are under 18 years old, you may use the Service, with or without registering, only with the approval of your parent or guardian.”
If they are older than 13 but still underaged
If they are 13 or older than 13, but still a teenager, you can continue the lesson. Please send us a short message after the lesson anyway, so we can validate their age.
We understand that being 13, 14, or 15 years old is still a young age. So please also let the team know in case you do not want to tutor this teenager again. We can manually block them from booking further Live Lessons with you. If you are okay with tutoring them, we want to encourage you to please get in touch with us if at any time you are uncomfortable tutoring such a young user. You don’t have to manage uncomfortable situations on your own and if anything happens, we will reach out to the parents right away. Under no circumstance we don’t want to put pressure on you because after all we’re not adapted to teaching teenagers.
