Why Do Online Community Groups Require 10 Day Old Accounts and 100 Positive Karma? What Parents Need To Know
My 12-year-old was half-way through her morning Cheerios last week when she slammed her phone down on the kitchen table hard enough to slosh milk over the edge of her cereal bowl. “It’s stupid,” she said, crossing her arms, blue pen smudge already on her gray sweatpants from the night before. “I worked three hours on this drawing and they won’t even let me post it.” I wiped up the milk with a paper towel and leaned over to see what she was talking about: the fan art group for her favorite cartoon, the one every girl in her math class had joined over spring break. Pop-up, clear as day: In order to post your account must be older than 10 days and have 100 positive karma.
She’d made the account the previous night after scrolling through everyone’s posts at a sleepover, and couldn’t understand why a random number of days and some made-up points were stopping her from sharing her work. I told her I get why it feels that unfair – I used to think the exact same rule was pointless, before I started moderating a small homeschool craft group for local kids a few years back.
Three years ago, our group didn’t have that rule. One Saturday, we woke up to 17 new accounts all created that same morning, every single one leaving links to fake free Minecraft coin giveaways in the comment sections of kids’ craft posts. Half the group is 10 to 14 years old, and three of them clicked the link and entered their Roblox login information before any of the mods could delete the posts. We spent the next three days messaging parents to warn them to change their kids’ passwords and check for unauthorized charges. After that, we added the exact same rule: 10 days old, 100 positive karma, to post anything to the main feed.
The rule isn’t about keeping new people out, or being snobby about who gets to share. Bots and scammers don’t want to wait 10 days. They don’t want to leave genuine comments on other people’s work to earn upvotes. They just want to dump their scam links and move on to the next unprotected group. This simple rule filters out 90% of that garbage before it ever hits the feed kids see. It also cuts down on people who get banned for harassment and just make a new account to come back and bother more kids. It’s not fancy, but it works for most of the problems small, kid-focused groups deal with.
My daughter still thought it was unfair that her drawing had to sit around for 10 days. I didn’t just tell her to get over it. I said, okay, let’s use these 10 days to get that karma, it’s not hard. We made a little routine: every night after she finished her homework, we’d pull up the group feed, she’d scroll through the new posts, and leave one or two specific comments. No generic “cool” – I told her to say what she actually liked, like “I love how you shaded the cat’s ears, that looks so soft” or “this alternate ending is so clever, I never thought of that”. Most people upvote nice, specific comments because it makes them feel good, I told her. By day 8, she already had 112 positive karma. We just had to wait two more days for her account to hit the 10-day mark.
When she finally posted her drawing, people already recognized her username from her comments. She got 42 upvotes, and a girl from another state commented that she wanted to draw a matching piece with my daughter’s character. They’ve been talking in DMs about shared fanfic ideas every weekend since. The wait ended up being a good thing, not just a hassle – it pushed her to engage with the group instead of just dropping her post and leaving.
But that’s not always how it goes. Last month, my neighbor’s 13-year-old found a stray dog walking home from school, tried to post a found dog flyer in our local teen hiking group, and got blocked by the rule. He’d just made his account that day to post the flyer, so we had to message the head mod, explain the situation, and they approved it manually. It was a hassle, and the dog almost got moved to a different shelter before the flyer went up. The rule isn’t perfect, and it’s not convenient every single time.
From what I’ve seen, a lot of parents just tell their kids “it’s the rule, deal with it” when they hit this error message, or get frustrated themselves and call the platform ridiculous. But there are small, concrete things you can do to make it easier, instead of leaving your kid upset. First, validate the frustration first – it really does suck to wait to share something you worked hard on. Just saying “That’s really annoying, I’d be upset too” goes a lot further than shutting down their feelings. Second, explain what the rule is actually for in simple terms, no jargon – you don’t need to get into algorithms, just say “it keeps scammers who want to trick kids out of their money from posting here”. Third, if your kid wants to post something soon, help them build karma early by commenting on other posts – 10 minutes a day is enough to get 100 karma in a week most of the time. Fourth, if it’s something urgent like a lost pet or a school fundraiser, just message the mods – most are happy to make an exception for real kids.
I still see people complaining about this rule in parent groups I’m in, calling it unnecessary gatekeeping. I get that frustration. It’s inconvenient when your kid just wants to share their art or ask a question right now. But after spending a whole weekend cleaning up after a scam that hit a dozen kids, I’m glad most small groups for kids and teens have it. My daughter still comments on other people’s posts in that fan group every other night, even though she’s got enough karma to post whenever she wants now. She says it’s fun seeing what other people make, anyway. I don’t know if she would have stuck around to do that if she’d just been able to drop her post and leave the first day. Some rules that feel annoying at first end up working out better than you expect, even when they’re not perfect.
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