Controversial topic here possibly but my daughter got a free U16 account setup a few years ago but is about to turn 16. Whilst she is a very occasional cyclist, my son who is now 9 is a mad wee rider and wants to zwift over the winter to keep riding even if its indoors over the winter months.
I just spotted that new U16 accounts are now no longer accepted. Loads of reasons given due to privacy laws etc among other things. I still think there is a perfectly good and reasonable argument to reintroduce the platform for U16 so I want to see this reintroduced as a feature going forward.
I don’t think this should be controversial at all.
Zwift put some pretty good “guardrails” on the U16 accounts with disabling messaging. I don’t know what residual risk they felt was too high to keep doing this.
The vast majority of the U16 accounts were set up and not used a lot, basically being just exposure. I don’t see how it cost Zwift much in terms of accounts not being paid for unless there was rampant fraud, but somehow I doubt it.
Yeah, completely agree. I found the logic difficult since there are many “U16” players on Fortnite these days and epic games has no issues there nor gets any grief from regulatory authorities. It’s a free to play platform. Can’t see why we cant have the next generation of Zwifters / Cyclists getting onboard and growing the user base for years to come. Certainly Zwift offers a far more health promoting window to online gaming through cycling for kids and I would have thought zwift would be all for promoting this.
This is the way it was with my kid. She only used Zwift infrequently, once a month (or less). But when she did use it she would go more than 25km and do a proper ride. If she ever asked to go on Zwift I was always really excited to say “YES!”. It’s not really worth it for me to buy a monthly membership for her when she uses it so sparingly, but having the option available once in a while was really nice and maybe would have eventually got her hooked on indoor riding.
I wish they would add it back again, there are plently of other gaming platforms that allow for kids to have account, all the training platforms seem to be adults and not kids, there is not even a duo or family plan for Zwift, i can see why people are choosing to move to My Whoosh
