What “your account must be 10 days old and have 100 positive karma” means for kids online: parenting tips
I was folding Javi’s grass-stained soccer uniforms at the kitchen counter last Tuesday when he slumped down next to me, phone held out at arm’s length like it had bitten him. “Look at this. Stupid,” he said. The screen lit up with a clear error message I’d never seen before: In order to post your account must be older than 10 days and have 100 positive karma.
Javi’s 12, and this was the small fan art community his best friend had been raving about for weeks. No algorithm shoving viral reels at you, no weird influencers chasing clout, just kids posting art and talking about their favorite games. He’d spent three afternoons after homework finishing a drawing of the main character from his favorite indie RPG, and he wanted to enter the group’s weekly fan art contest. The deadline was five days away. He’d made his account four days prior, and had 12 total karma from leaving quick “cool” comments on a handful of posts. He was fuming, convinced the whole rule was just gatekeeping to keep new people from sharing their work. I almost offered to make an account for him under my email to get around the wait, but then I remembered my friend Lila mods a 10,000-member teen writing community, so I texted her that night to ask why these rules even exist.
She broke it down simply: small, volunteer-moderated communities get hit with 10 to 15 spam accounts a day. People make new accounts to post scam links for free in-game currency, drop unrequested explicit content, or get banned for harassment and make a new profile to start over. If they don’t have a waiting period and a minimum karma requirement, the whole front page gets filled with garbage in a week. Mods are mostly teens and college students who love the community, not paid staff, so they don’t have time to approve every single new post. The 10-day wait filters out almost all one-off spam accounts, because spammers don’t wait 10 days to post their links. The 100 karma requirement just proves you’re actually interacting with other members, not just dropping a scam link and dipping. It’s not about being mean to new people—it’s about keeping the space usable for everyone who actually wants to be there.
The next day, I told Javi what Lila said. He still thought the rule was dumb, but he was willing to try to hit the requirements before the contest deadline. We mapped out three small steps to get him to 100 karma fast, none of which took more than 20 minutes a day. First, the group had a pinned introduction thread that even brand new accounts could post in. I told him to write what he likes, mention he was working on a contest entry, and that people would probably upvote it just to welcome him. That got him 12 more karma by lunch, bringing him up to 24. Second, I told him to stop leaving one-word comments. Instead of “cool,” leave one specific detail about the art you like. People don’t upvote generic comments, but they do upvote “I love how you drew the scar on his cheek, it looks exactly how I imagined it” because it feels like a real interaction. He spent 20 minutes that night going through the group’s top posts from the past week, leaving that kind of comment, and woke up to 28 more upvotes. Third, the group had a weekly casual sketch thread where any member could share work in progress, even if they couldn’t start their own posts. He uploaded a half-finished shot of his contest drawing, asked for tips on getting hair texture right, and got 35 more upvotes by the end of the day.
By day eight after opening his account, Javi was at 104 karma. He was bouncing off the walls, until we re-read the rule: you need both requirements. He still had two more days to go before his account hit 10 days old, and the contest deadline was the next day. He missed it. He moped for an hour, ate extra chocolate ice cream after dinner, and that was that.
This experience changed how I look at random online community rules that seem arbitrary to adults. When your kid just wants to share something they worked hard on, it’s easy to see the rule as unfair or exclusionary. But these small niche communities are the only places online right now where kids can interact without the chaos of big social media, and these rules are what keep them that way.
For other parents who get this exact error pop up when their kid is trying to post, there are a few concrete things I’d recommend doing instead of panicking or trying to cheat the system. First, don’t make an account under your name to get around the rule. Most of these groups require accounts to be 13+ per COPPA rules anyway, and if you get caught, your kid will lose all their work and get permanently banned. Second, use the three steps we used: post in the pinned new member intro thread for easy welcome karma, leave specific comments instead of generic ones to get more upvotes, and share a casual WIP in any open thread that allows new users. Most people can hit 100 karma in 3 to 4 days of 15 minute sessions, it’s not as hard as it looks. Third, it’s okay if they miss a deadline or have to wait. It’s a small, low-stakes lesson that online communities aren’t just there to give your kid attention—you have to engage with other people before you share your own stuff, which is a rule that works just as well offline as it does online.
Javi posted his finished drawing two days after the contest closed. He got 72 upvotes, and three other artists asked him what brush he uses for linework. He still complains about the 10-day rule sometimes, says it’s stupid he missed the contest, but he comments on other people’s art every other day now, and has a small group chat with three other artists he does collabs with. I don’t think the rule is perfect—there’s definitely something to be said for making space for brand new creators who don’t have time to wait. But I get why it’s there. Some boundaries online aren’t meant to keep you out. They’re meant to keep the space worth being part of.
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