Stole my kid’s email – Google Family Link Review

We were getting ready to get my son his first real email address, one with a unique username he was excited for and which I would have the password to and he would only be able to use with supervision. We were told that he’s too young for a Gmail account unless we want to use family link, so that’s what I tried to set up. We created the account and tried to sign in but couldn’t. None of the apps worked despite using them on compatible devices. I couldn’t change his age so that his account would work independently, so finally we got frustrated and deleted the account, not realizing that the username was gone forever. Google SAYS you can recover family email accounts but they lie, full stop, because the option to do so is nowhere. The account name is gone forever, my son is sad, and I’m angry. Phooey on this app and on Google telling me what my child can and can’t have. Future plans: lie to Google.
Review by Arcane the Woof on Google Family Link.