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I run a twitter account with over 80,000 followers. I'm an adult. Recently someone contacted me offering website redesign help in exchange for a t-shirt. It was kinda obvious that he might be under 18 so I went to his Twitter account and found that recently he was in his local news for some program he wrote. The news noted that he recently turned 13.

So my question is this. Are there legal reasons that I should consider before writing him back via e-mail? I realize there are probably also things to consider about some kind of contract regarding the shirt, but I at least wanted to write him back and tell him that I'll need to look into that. But that's when I realized that maybe I shouldn't contact him at all due to his age.

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  • I think both answers immediately assumed that I was asking about the legality of the contract when I was really wanting to know if contacting the child was legal. Thanks anyways for all the advice.
    – deltaray
    Commented Jan 23, 2015 at 15:13

2 Answers 2

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Sounds like you know the legal jurisdiction where the minor resides, so you should look up the child labor laws (both where you live and where the minor lives) and try your best to adhere to those so that you don't get in trouble for that.

Maybe it is as simple as their parent selling you the "product"

As long as your site isn't obscene or graphic in any way (18+) there shouldn't be anything to worry about as far as communicating with the minor child.

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I am not a lawyer, but I'm also not aware of any jurisdiction in which talking to a minor is a criminal act as long as the topics of conversation are not inappropriate in nature. If anything, corresponding electronically offers you further protection as there is an electronic record of the communication should they decided to try to accuse you of anything (though such an outcome is unlikely).

If you choose to use content he created, it may be worth having him and a parent or guardian agree that you have the right to use the content they created, but if they gave it to you with something like a CC license then you would be all set there too. A contract probably isn't even strictly necessary if the only compensation is a T-shirt, just as long as you have proof that the content is licensed for your use.

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