2 Requests - Under 16s in Clubs & Club limit rise to 5+

I can see no valid reason to not let children in Clubs.
The meetup feature allows for juniors to be invited to events, and juniors can attend Club events if they are sent (via a 3rd party) the link. Not allowing the under 16s into the Club just makes the whole thing far more clunky and awkward.

I am in 3 cycling clubs in real life. I ride with one socially, race for another and the third is one I coach juniors at. I am also involved with two more “clubs” through Zwift. This current limit of 3 is incredibly limiting. I understand Zwift may want to have a limit, as you’ll have the Strava situation where people are members of hundreds of clubs, but I really should be able to join the 5 Clubs that I actually do stuff with.

Please can we get these tweaks made asap, they really shouldn’t take much to be updated.
Cheers.

I 100% agree with these suggestions. I help out with a team for juniors and organize events for kids on Zwift with now around 100 members. IMO juniors are safe in clubs(because the only clubs they will join are the ones they are invited to, which are probably people they know). I have been on Zwift for over three years, and have never experienced bullying or anything like that.

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Sorry Oliver, but this doesn’t make any sense. A sample size of one isn’t exactly conclusive proof that it doesn’t happen.

And what’s to stop a Bad Person creating a club and inviting lots of under-16s if Zwift were to open it up as you suggest?

Hopefully there are things that Zwift can do to get under-16s safely involved with clubs, but blindly insisting that nothing unsafe can happen doesn’t seem a sensible way forward.

There’s nothing to stop a bad person sending a load of follow requests to juniors as it stands, often those same users will reciprocate with a follow back and then they can be invited to meetups.
You’ll never remove all the bad people from the internet, but you can educate the vulnerable and make it such that said bad people can’t really get any info anyway.

You’re right. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to extend that further, from transitory Meetups to a more solid and official-seeming Club.

You’re right that just having my experience doesn’t say that this doesn’t happen. Also you can only join a club if you are following the person who created it, so the u16 would have to be following the bad person(and yes, it is highly likely that there are u16 riders out there following bad people).

First, I want to say that I am really a big fan of @Oliver_ZRace_Central and his dedication on Zwift. I am really awed by his love of cycling and Zwift.

I generally agree @JimH with 5 being really restrictive, I just posted my thoughts around limits:

As far as Zwift youth, it is at the top of my mind. I agree, currently there are a lot of interactions in certain areas of Zwift when there probably should not be with youth on our platform. I also think the Zwift community is one of the best communities out there and it shows through @Oliver_ZRace_Central experience thus far. I am sure 99% of the time, youth on Zwift will have a great experience but I do have to account for that small probability that something horrible might happen. I want to ensure that I have done my due diligence to ensure that we created a safe environment for youth on the Clubs platform before enabling it.

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Clubs such as Zwift Insider club can be verified and made official/verified so for specific clubs such as that one 12+ or something can join it because it is very strange that child accounts cannot join clubs.

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Clubs now go up to 10 but another solution is parent permission for joining clubs in the child account application form that needs to be filled out each year until the child turns 16

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Kids love clubs. I’ve got two very junior riders on Zwift and both want to be part of a club. The boy wants to start his own club just for kids and has already designed the kit for its members.

We have some good safeguards in place. Messaging turned off for kids accounts. Private accounts by default. I run the Companion app when my kids ride and decline all follow requests (other than from family members).

It would be great to have some clubs and rides for kids only. Hopefully Zwift HQ can figure out a way.

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I agree, making groups available for kids would be nice. Also for kids cycling teams to use with indoor training and be able to communicate in a save environment.
My son (almost 13) likes cycling outside and insite on zwift. And would very much like to join some (local) clubs als extra motivation.

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