Under 18 students will lose access to YouTube and Blogger September 1

Students who are younger than 18 will no longer be able to use their school Google Workspace for Education account for Blogger or YouTube starting September 1. 

Any YouTube or Blogger content should be backed up as soon as possible. 

After September 1, students will still be able to use Google Takeout to create an archive of Blogger and YouTube data for at least a couple of months, as long as the Takeout service is enabled. 

Note that Blogger blog posts and comments downloaded through Takeout cannot be imported into a new blog. To create an importable backup, also export the blog from inside Blogger. Students must do this before September 1st. 

• Who is affected by this update?
• What will happen with YouTube?
• Student YouTube channels cannot be transferred
• Download an archive of YouTube content
• What will happen with Blogger?
• Download an archive of Blogger content

Watch an overview:

Who is affected?

Google Workspace for Education administrators designate which of their users is over-18. 

Any K-12 Google Workspace for Education users who are not designated as older than 18 will be affected by these changes. 

A number of Google Products will have new restrictions, including YouTube, Blogger, Google Search, Google Play, Google Maps and Google Earth, and Google Photos. Get all the details.

What will happen with YouTube? 

On September 1, any under-18 Google Education account will have their YouTube channel hidden. 

There will be a number of other limitations. 

The account cannot be used for any features that require a YouTube channel: 

• Create channels, playlists, stories, shorts, or upload videos
• Watch or create live stream events
• See or post comments
• Participate in live chat
• Buy channel memberships, creator merchandise, movies and TV shows, Super Chat and Super Stickers, or participate in YouTube Giving fundraisers

Accounts will also not be able to use YouTube apps or other services: 

• Use the YouTube Go, YouTube Music, YouTube Studio, YouTube TV, or YouTube VR apps
• Cast on TV
• Connect game accounts
• Use Incognito mode
• Get personalized ads
• Enable or disable Restricted Mode

This should not affect under-18 users who are using a personal Google account, as long as they are old enough to use YouTube.

Younger children can use the YouTube Kids app or youtubekids.com with parental permission. 

Parents can also supervise their children's use of YouTube proper. Learn more here.

Student YouTube channels cannot be transferred to another account

As of July 2019, K-12 student G Suite for Education (now Google Workspace) accounts lost the ability to own or manage Brand Accounts.  

What that means is that student YouTube channels cannot be transferred to a personal Google account. 

On September 1st, under-18 student channels will be hidden, and the only option will be to download an archive of the channel data. 

Download an archive of YouTube content

There are two options for backing up the content of your YouTube channel:

• Download individual videos from the Content tab in YouTube Studio.
• Download all your YouTube data in Google Takeout.

If you download individual videos from YouTube Studio, be aware that the maximum resolution is 720p.

Videos with copyright or Community Guidelines strikes cannot be downloaded. 

Get detailed instructions on how to backup your YouTube account.

What will happen with Blogger? 

After September 1st under-18 students at primary and secondary (K-12) schools will lose access to Blogger. 

Blogs that have an under-18 student as the sole administrator will be removed. Additional administrators can be added. See these instructions.

Blogger content can be downloaded using Google Takeout through November 2021. Content backups can only be exported from inside Blogger until September 1st.

Note that if a child or teen has an account managed through Family Link, and they are not old enough to manage a Google account on their own, they will also lose access to Blogger. The minimum age requirement varies by country, from age 13 to 16. Visit the link to find the minimum age in your country.

Download your Blogger content

Blogger offers several ways to back up content. 

• Download an XML file of the blog's posts, pages and comments from the Settings "Manage Blog" section by clicking "back up content". 
• If blog is exported as an XML file from the Blogger settings, it will be in a format that can be re-imported into a different Blogger blog or WordPress blog.
• Download a blog's theme from the blog's Theme page
• Download videos uploaded to a Blogger blog in the account video management page
• Download a blog's images in Album Archive
• Download all the content in a Blogger account content in Google Takeout, including:
• Blog feed, including posts, pages and comments as an Atom  feed
• Photos in their original format
• Album metadata including title and description
• Photo metadata such as creation time or comments
• Videos that you uploaded to a blog. 
• Reactions you made to posts (this feature is now deprecated)
• Followers (only available if you are an admin)
• Settings
• Profile
• Reading list
• Theme

Get detailed instructions on how to backup your Blogger content.

Learn more

• Announcement: Safer learning with Google for Education
• Announcement: Blogger restriction for students designated as under 18 in K-12 Edu domains
• Google Workspace Help Center: Control access to Google services by age
• Tutorial: back up your Blogger content
  
• Tutorial: back up your YouTube content