Policy
Child Safety at The Living Bread
The Living Bread is for ages 13 and up. We ask for a year of birth when an account is created, we delete rather than record an under 13 account, and an account known to belong to someone under 18 cannot be listed publicly, cannot hold exact coordinates, and cannot be sent a first direct message by an adult. Those rules are enforced in our database. This page also names what we have not built.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” Mark 10:14, King James Version.
This is the public copy of the policy that also appears inside the app. It exists on the open web on purpose, so that a parent, a pastor, a store reviewer, or a ministry that works with children can read our posture without installing anything.
Ages 13 and up, and it is asked rather than assumed
When a profile is created we ask for the year you were born, the year only and never the day. If that year puts a visitor under 13 we do not create an account: the sign in that had begun is deleted through the same mechanism a believer uses to erase themselves, nothing about them is retained, and they are shown a page saying God is not waiting for them to be older, which points them to Scripture, free and needing no account. The check runs again on our server, so it cannot be bypassed by editing the app.
Four protections for minors, built and not yet live
Read this before the table. The four protections below are written and reviewed but are not yet switched on in our production database, so at this moment they are not protecting anybody. We publish them in this state, labelled honestly, rather than waiting and then claiming they had always been there. This page is generated by a script that probes the live database for them, so the heading above will change by itself on the day they are in force, and cannot be changed by anyone editing text.
| Protection | How it is enforced |
|---|---|
| A minor is never publicly listed | A trigger on the account record refuses public visibility while the account belongs to someone under 18. It is not a default that a wrong tap can undo. |
| A minor never holds exact coordinates | The same trigger reduces location precision, and will not let it be raised. |
| An adult cannot open a conversation with a minor | The function that creates any direct message thread refuses, so the rule holds on every screen including ones written later. Two young people may still talk. An existing conversation is not severed, because that would cut a teenager off from a youth leader or an aunt with no warning; for a conversation that has gone wrong, blocking is instant and reporting wakes a person. |
| A minor is never offered for crisis or one to one care | The account cannot be marked available for either. |
Reporting danger to a child comes first
The report menu opens with “A child is in danger, or someone is grooming a minor”. A report in those terms is marked urgent by our server from the wording alone, sorts above everything else in the review queue, and sends a notification to every moderator the moment it is filed. Content that sexualizes, grooms, endangers, or exploits a minor ends the account, and is reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and to law enforcement. There are no second chances on that line.
Nobody meets alone
Where anything here leads to a meeting in person, the guidance is not optional: meet in public, tell somebody where you are going, and for any gathering involving young people or vulnerable adults invite a second adult and never meet one to one.
Guardian consent, described exactly
A parent or guardian's permission for a young person can be recorded against that account, with who gave it, what it covers, and when. We are careful about what that is: an attestation with an audit trail. It is not verified parental consent in the legal sense, because we do not confirm that the adult is who they say they are. We would rather say so than let the word consent do work it has not earned.
- No automated scanning of images for child sexual abuse material. No hash matching, no classifier of any kind.
- No detection of grooming language.
- No verified parental consent process. This is the reason the kids and youth area of the app is switched off and unavailable to anyone.
- Moderation is reviewed by a person, not by a round the clock rota. We are a small team and will not describe it as more than that.
- Our policies have not had a legal review, and each one says so on its own face.
What we currently know about the ages of our users
Published rather than characterised, because a ministry working with children deserves the number and not an adjective.
The schema carries birth_year, is_minor and age_verified_at, but they are only populated for accounts that volunteered a birthday. The platform therefore cannot today state an age distribution for its users, and does not claim one.
Tell us
Anything can be reported in the app with one tap. For anything involving a child that needs a human immediately, write to support@living-bread.org with “CHILD SAFETY” in the subject line. If a child is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first. We would always rather be told twice than not at all.
