Tennis Ladder takes junior safety seriously, and several protections are built in rather than optional.
Junior leagues are walled off. Players, results and match details in a junior league are only visible to approved members of that league and the club's organisers — never to the public, other adults at the club, or search engines.
Names are protected. Where junior names could appear in shared or public places, they're masked server-side — this isn't a setting anyone can switch off by accident.
Age and gender eligibility is enforced when joining: a junior can't join an adult league (and vice versa) without meeting the league's rules.
Date of birth (juniors only). When a junior joins, their parent or guardian gives the player's date of birth. It's used for exactly three things: verifying age, applying the right protections for their age, and switching junior protections off automatically when they turn 16. It's never shown to anyone — not other members, not organisers — and it never appears in the app.
Growing up is automatic. On a junior's 16th birthday their account graduates to Adult: junior protections lift and emails start going to the player instead of their guardian. No one has to remember to do it. (Profiles without a date of birth on file are moved by the club organiser instead, who verifies age first.) If the player doesn't have their own email address on file yet, the parent or guardian receives a handover email that day with the player's personal sign-in link to pass on — once signed in, the player adds their own email under Profile.
Contact details are never shown. No junior email or phone number is ever displayed to other members.
Messaging is guardian-controlled, with more independence from 16. An adult can never message a junior on Tennis Ladder — full stop, organisers included. Juniors can use match chat with other juniors when a match is on (a ladder challenge or a friendly between two juniors):
- Under 16: chat stays off until every player's parent or guardian has switched it on, and guardians receive a copy of every message by email.
- 16 and 17 (where we hold a date of birth): old enough to use match chat themselves — no guardian switch needed. Every other protection still applies.
- At every age: junior chat is juniors-only, phone numbers, links and social handles are blocked, chats are match-time only (no ongoing DMs), and anything can be reported to the club with one tap.
Junior friendlies stay private. Two juniors can arrange and log a friendly match, but the result is only visible to the players themselves, their junior group and the club's organisers — never in the club-wide results feed.
Friendlies with adults — the parent decides. A junior who plays up in an adult league can arrange friendly matches with adult members of that same league, but only after their parent or guardian switches it on (one tap in an email, or from More → Family in the app). What stays protected even then:
- No chat, ever — adults and juniors still can't message each other. Games are arranged by suggesting match times in the app.
- Match emails go to the parent, and the parent gets an email every time a game with an adult is arranged, with a one-tap link to switch the permission off again.
- These friendly results stay private, exactly like junior friendlies above.
GIFs and reactions across the whole platform run through a hard, G-rated content filter enforced on our servers — it can't be bypassed from a device. Anything that slips through can be reported with one tap and disappears immediately pending review.
Questions or concerns about a junior's account? Contact us and mark it urgent — safeguarding queries jump the queue.
Identity and guardian contact
A parent or guardian email is a contact route, not the child's sign-in identity. Two children may safely share the same guardian address: their player records, notifications and account deletion are kept separate. If a junior has their own email, it may be stored separately; otherwise the player email remains blank and messages route to the guardian.
A junior's own sign-in email is guardian-managed. A junior can be given their own email address purely so they can sign in themselves (to see their matches, send challenges and log results). That address is set by the parent or guardian — at sign-up, or later from More → Family in the guardian's own account — or by the club organiser. Juniors can't change their sign-in email themselves, and Tennis Ladder never sends email to a junior's own address: every email about a junior, including sign-in links and reminders, goes to the parent or guardian — even when the junior plays in an adult league.