Short answer: reserving a dormant handle is a different activity from a child actively using a platform. The law and the platforms care almost entirely about the second.
What COPPA actually regulates
COPPA — the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act — restricts how operators collect and use personal information from kids under 13. It targets data collection during active use: profile data, location, behavioural signals, ads.
A parent-created, parent-controlled, dormant account with no posts, no friends and no profile data is not what COPPA was designed to police.
What platform TOS say
Most major platforms require a user to be 13 or older. The TOS is between the platform and the account holder — which, in this case, is you. You are the one creating the account, you are the one managing it, and you are the one who decides when to hand it to your child.
That's why we recommend using a generic display name and your own recovery email until your child takes over.
Practical rules we follow
- The account is created and operated by the parent.
- The bio is empty or generic until the child is age-appropriate.
- The account is set to private wherever possible.
- The recovery email and phone are the parent's.
- No real photos of the child are posted.
When a kid is ready to use it
When they turn 13 (or the platform's stated age), you hand over the credentials, walk through the privacy settings together, and let them update the profile themselves. That conversion from "reserved" to "active" is when the platform's age rules and most of COPPA actually start to matter.