Microsoft Family - Child can remove themselves from the family

I’ve just suffered this same issue with my 14 year old son. I’m pretty clued up with these kind of issues and at first I thought that I must have an issue with his settings or he had comprised my Microsoft password. Sadly after having a thorough investigation I found it’s neither of these and you can just simply log into his child Microsoft account and the option is right there in front of you “leave group”. I totally understand as he grows he will deserve more privacy and freedoms but this is ridiculous that I can’t control that as a responsible parent. Microsoft you are leaving me as a parent with possibly the only choice of having to removing these Microsoft products from my children and using other platforms from your competitors unless you fix this major problem. How can we protect our children from adult content when a 14 year old child can override your age restriction, also how can you legally design, and manufacturer products aimed to be sold to young children that can give them uncontrolled access to god knows what. Please sort this problem out as I can see from these threads that this has been going on for at least a few years. If it’s not resolved soon and any of my other children find out how ridiculously easy it is to bypass your child security, well when birthdays and Christmas comes around I won’t be purchasing any more Microsoft gaming machines, laptops or smartphones.

I am facing the same problem. My family group has four Child accounts for my 18 year old daughter and 15, 10, and 8 year old sons. I totally get that my daughter should have the option to leave the Group since she is an adult. But my 15 year old also has the option to leave. However, the 10 and 8 year olds do not have this option at all when logged into their accounts. All the 15 year old has to do is Log In to his account on a computer and click the Family link, then click "Leave family group" and select "Remove" from the popup dialog. No password or parental consent is required. This is a HUGE miss on Microsofts part, and searching the community it seems like there are a huge number of parents with the same concern.

I posted the same issue in a separate post regarding my 15yo son. The reply I got from Microsoft is that because US law considers a 13 year old an “adult” as far as online presence goes, Microsoft also considers anyone 13 or older to be an adult, even if the account is setup as a child. So, I changed the birth date on my son’s account to appear as an 11 year old and he no longer has the option to leave the family group, or to change any parental control options. This forces him into 2 more years of parental control. At the end of that time he’ll actually be 17 and in my opinion he can change his account as he pleases. It’s not ideal, but an effective work around.

I have the same problem. An account set up as a child for a 13 yr old allows my kid to just leave the ms family when his time is up. And worse yet, when i take his computer And reinstate him

with the same email, none of the settings are saved and i have to start all over again with blocking websites. It’s a major problem. Please fix this.

Hi Prakhar,

Thank you for your response. I've tried removing and re-adding the child account and it is still possible for them to leave the family group.

They are definitely added as a child as they are unable to set screentime, although they are able to opt-out of activity monitoring.

Thanks,

Chris