Zoom Safety Guide for Parents
What parents need to know about Zoom — video call safety, meeting link risks, recording concerns, and settings for safer use with children.
Zoom is a video-conferencing app for online meetings, classes and calls, widely used for work, school and keeping in touch remotely.
Official age
16+
We recommend
16+
Developer
Zoom Video Communications
Risks
3
Features to know about
Overview
Zoom is a video conferencing platform primarily designed for business and educational use. It became ubiquitous during the Covid-19 pandemic and is now widely used by schools, clubs, tutors, and families. Zoom itself is a legitimate and widely trusted platform, but its ease of use — including the ability to join meetings via a link without creating an account — creates specific safeguarding risks when links are shared insecurely.
How children use it
Children primarily use Zoom for school lessons, tutoring, clubs, and keeping in touch with family. Older teenagers may use it for study groups or social calls. The risks are less about Zoom's design and more about how meeting links are shared and who joins calls.
Main risks
Recommended privacy settings
Waiting Room
Location: Zoom Settings → Security → Waiting Room
Set to: Always on for meetings involving children
The Waiting Room requires the host to admit each participant before they can join. This prevents uninvited people from joining calls, even if they have the meeting link.
Require Passcode
Location: Zoom Settings → Security → Require Passcode
Set to: On for any meeting involving children
Requiring a passcode in addition to the meeting link significantly reduces the risk of uninvited joining ('Zoom-bombing').
Recording Controls
Location: Zoom Settings → Recording
Set to: Disable participant recording
By default, participants may be able to record a meeting. Disabling participant recording ensures that only the host controls recording and that children cannot be recorded without the host's knowledge.
Parent actions
Ensure any Zoom meeting your child joins for school, tutoring, or clubs has a waiting room and passcode set up by the organiser — ask the organiser to confirm this
Time: 5 minutes
Talk to your child about not sharing Zoom meeting links or passcodes with anyone not invited to the call
Time: 10 minutes
Sit nearby during any Zoom calls your younger child has with people they do not know well in real life
Time: Ongoing
Related app guides
If you need to report this
In immediate danger: call 999. For non-emergency police matters, call 101.
Concerned about a child but it's not an emergency? NSPCC helpline 0808 800 5000. Childline for young people 0800 1111.
Myths & facts
Myth: Zoom's under-16 age rule means a child can't be on a Zoom call unless they have their own adult-verified account.
Fact: Zoom's terms only stop under-16s creating their own Zoom account — a school running Zoom for Education can still host a meeting that a much younger child joins as a student. The safeguard that matters for a child isn't an age check on their own account, it's whether whoever is running and securing that meeting has set it up properly.
Myth: Zoom locked down screen-sharing years ago, so nothing unexpected can appear on a child's screen.
Fact: Zoom's default is that only the host can share their screen, but any host can switch this to let all participants share, and some organisers do this for convenience. It's worth checking rather than assuming the safer default is still switched on for every meeting your child joins.
Myth: If the video call looks and sounds like the usual class or tutor session, it must be exactly who it is supposed to be.
Fact: A meeting link can get forwarded inside a group chat, sometimes without the organiser knowing, so an unfamiliar face turning up on an otherwise normal-looking call is possible. Check the participant list against who your child expects to be there and flag anything odd to the organiser straight away.
Age by age
- 8-10
At this age Zoom should always be set up by an adult — the organiser or a parent — with your child simply joining a link you've already checked. There's no need for your child to handle meeting links or passcodes themselves yet, and sitting nearby for the first few calls with an unfamiliar tutor or club leader helps you both get comfortable with how it works.
- 11-13
Most children this age can be trusted to join a class or club call themselves, but it's still worth agreeing which links are safe to click and asking them to check with you before joining any call from someone you don't recognise.
- 14-16
Teenagers can generally manage their own Zoom calls for school, tutoring, or study groups, but this is a good age to talk about why forwarding a class link into a group chat is different from sharing a photo — it can let in people who were never meant to be on the call.
- 17-plus
By now many young people are old enough to hold their own Zoom account and organise calls rather than just join them, so the conversation shifts to them applying the same waiting-room and passcode habits you used to set up on their behalf, now that they're the one hosting.
Frequently Asked Questions
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