Replika's 18-plus rule relies on a self-reported birthday

The design

Replika's Terms of Service, last updated 30 March 2026 and retrieved on 16 September 2026, set a blanket age floor: 'if you are under 18, you are not authorized to use the Services, with or without registering.' The document also prohibits users from attempting to 'solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 18,' extending the restriction beyond a user's own age to how they treat others on the platform. The Terms do not describe a separate, lower-restriction tier for 16-or 17-year-olds; the line is drawn at 18 for account creation itself.

What the evidence says

The Terms of Service describe no identity-verification or age-checking mechanism; the policy is a contractual prohibition, not a technical one. Replika's own help-center article, 'How do I update my birthday or age?', edited 7 June 2025 and retrieved 16 September 2026, shows the mechanism actually in use: a self-reported birthday entered in account settings, correctable 'within 24-48 hours,' after which a user must 'confirm your age before you can chat with your avatar again.' That confirmation step is itself self-attested, not an external check against a government ID or similar record; no cited document describes independent age verification.

What it asks of people

A prospective user is asked to state their own age honestly at signup and again if they ever change it, with no described consequence beyond a re-confirmation prompt if the change looks suspicious. The design places the entire compliance burden on self-report, which the Terms elsewhere prohibit minors from circumventing but do not describe any way to detect.

Privacy and safeguards

What is disclosed: an explicit 18-plus floor, a prohibition on soliciting minors' personal information, and a self-service birthday-correction flow with a short grace window. What is not disclosed: how many accounts are removed for misstated age, whether any automated signal (rather than self-report alone) contributes to enforcement, or whether any regulator has examined the adequacy of a self-attestation model for an app whose Terms otherwise permit romantic and intimate content.

• What would it take for Replika to confirm a stated age is accurate, beyond asking the user to state it again?
• Does a 24-to-48-hour correction window create an opportunity for a minor to enter and then 'correct' an age after already using the app?
• How does this self-attestation model compare with the age-verification approaches other companion apps in this dataset describe?

The gap between a firm contractual age floor and a self-reported, unverified mechanism for enforcing it is the central fact these two documents establish together, and it is a gap the Terms of Service alone do not reveal.