Short answer: on a Niantic Kids account — required under 13, or the local digital consent age — Friends, Gifting and Trading are switched off until a parent enables them in the Niantic Kids Parent Portal, and can be switched off again at any time. A trainer code only allows a friend request that must be accepted, and the parent is emailed whenever the child gains a friend.
Pokémon GO is rated for ages 9 and up, and its friend system was built with a young, global audience in mind. If a child in your house plays and shares a trainer code, here's exactly what that does and doesn't expose — and the controls Niantic gives parents.
The age rule
Niantic requires verifiable parental consent for players under 13 (or the digital consent age set by local law — some countries and US states set it higher), in line with COPPA and GDPR. Under that age, a child needs a Niantic Kids account rather than a standard one — when the app detects the player is under the threshold, it shows the Niantic Kids sign-in instead of the regular login options.
Friends, Gifting and Trading are off by default for kids
On a Niantic Kids account, the social features this whole site is built around — Friends, Gifting, and Trading — are not available until a parent turns them on. Setup happens in the Niantic Kids Parent Portal, linked from the parent's own account:
- A parent reviews and explicitly enables each social permission for the child's account.
- Any of them — Friends, Gifting, Trading, sponsored PokéStop visibility — can be switched off again at any time, independent of the others.
- When the child's account gains a new friend, the parent gets an email notification.
That means a family can choose, for example, to allow gifting and trading with people already added while keeping the friend list closed to new requests — or open everything only once the parent is comfortable.
What a trainer code exposes — and what it doesn't
A 12-digit trainer code only ever does one thing: it lets someone send a friend request that must be accepted before anything is shared. Once accepted, a friend sees the same public profile info any adult friend would — avatar, Buddy, team, Pokémon caught, Trainer level, distance walked, and battles won — never a real name, email, or exact home location. Our general safety breakdown covers the full list and the privacy toggles (like disabling "Catch and Share") that apply to every account, child or adult.
No in-game chat — and Campfire is separate
Pokémon GO itself has no direct messaging or chat feature between friends. The entire interaction surface with a friend is gifts, trades, raid invites, and battles — there's no text box for a stranger to type into. Niantic's separate Campfire app does have chat, but it's gated by the same digital-consent age as the rest of Niantic's social features and isn't required to use Pokémon GO's friend system at all.
Practical defaults for a family account
- Decide permissions in the Parent Portal first, before handing over trainer codes to add.
- Turn on the "new friend" email notification (on by default for Niantic Kids accounts) so you see additions as they happen.
- Prefer a moderated source of codes — a code board with no vetting is no different in risk from any public trainer code, but a family that wants to control who gets added may prefer adding known people (other family members, a school friend's code) over an open public pool.
- Revoke and re-add is always available — turning Friends off doesn't delete existing friendships, and turning it back on later doesn't require re-adding anyone.
FAQ
Can a stranger message my child through a friend request? No — Pokémon GO has no chat. Accepting a request only enables gifts, trades, raid invites, and battles, none of which carry free text.
Does my child need my permission to add anyone at all? Only under a Niantic Kids account — Friends is off there until a parent enables it in the Parent Portal. Accounts for players 13+ manage their own friend list like any adult account.
Will I be notified if my child adds someone new? Yes — Niantic Kids accounts send the linked parent an email when a new friend is added.
Is sharing a trainer code itself risky? No more than sharing a Nearby code with a classmate — see our full breakdown of what a trainer code can and can't do.