Uber Teen: Minors can use Uber alone! How it works for parents, teens, and drivers

Uber now has a feature that allows minors to take an Uber ride without being accompanied by an adult.

With Uber Teen, teens aged 13–17 can request a ride from their own Uber account and ride alone—but only after a parent or guardian adds them to a family profile.

Parents and guardians get real-time ride updates and teens have access to several safety features, like PIN verification and in-ride audio recording.

Prior to Uber Teen, unaccompanied minors were not allowed to use Uber under any circumstances.

If Uber for teens isn’t in available your city yet, teens and children are still prohibited from riding without an adult.

Uber drivers: Ride requests from authorized teens are labeled as a teen request. See how you can disable teen ride requests here.

Read on to learn more about Uber Teen and how you can request an Uber for your teen!

Article contents

• Uber teen for passengers
• Uber teen for Uber drivers

Uber for teens: Minors aged 13–17 can ride alone

With Uber for teens, unaccompanied teens age 13–17 can request an Uber and ride alone or order on Uber Eats after a parent or guardian adds them to a family profile.

This gives teens full flexibility to get a ride anywhere they need to go. Rides are paid for with the parent or guardian’s payment method, so teens won’t need to handle any payment.

Parents and guardians can follow the ride with real-time location tracking and pickup/dropoff notifications.

Teens are allowed to bring other riders with them, but the other riders must be 13 or older and the other riders must have permission to ride from a parent or guardian.

Uber doesn’t say how the other teen riders can demonstrate that they have permission.

Safety features for parents and guardians of teens: Live tracking, communicate with drivers

• Get notifications when a ride is requested by the teen user, then pickup/dropoff notifications
• Real time ride tracking: See where the car is at all times
• Contact and communicate with the driver from the Uber app
• Remove the payment method if you want to block further rides
• Remove the teen account to end their ride privileges

Safety features for teen riders

• Each ride uses PIN verification and RideCheck
• Easy access to the Uber safety line or 911
• Teens have the option to enable in-ride audio recording

PIN verification and RideCheck are enabled by default and can’t be turned off, but in-ride audio recording is an optional. Only teens can setup audio recording—parents can’t turn it on from their parent/guardian profile.

Note that drivers can also turn on audio recording, and teens will be notified if a driver has recording set up.

How to add a teen to your family profile

Add your child to your family profile by going to Account > Settings > Family > Add member > Teen

Select your teen from your contacts and they will receive an SMS invite that allows them to create a teen account in their own Uber app.

Setting up a teen account

Teens can create their own Uber account after receiving a text invite from a parent or guardian. 

Teens must do a mandatory safety training that teaches them how to use the app, the special features of the teen account, and how they can use built-in safety features to stay safe.

Where is Uber for teens available?

Uber Teen is available in most US states. Check this page at Uber.com for the complete list of eligible cities.

Uber teen not available? Unaccompanied minors can’t request rides or ride alone!

Unaccompanied minors can only use Uber via an approved teen profile in an eligible city. So in any areas that doesn’t have allow teen profiles, riders under 18 can’t use Uber alone.

Minors can’t request rides without an authorized profile, and minors can’t ride alone in an Uber even if a parent or guardian says that they requested the ride.

Drivers can cancel a ride if they believe the rider is an unaccompanied minor.

More help for Uber users

• The best ways to contact Uber customer service
• How much does Uber cost?
• What’s the difference between the Uber ride types?

For Uber drivers: How Uber Teen works

Ride requests from approved teen riders have a ‘teen’ label. The passenger will be a minor aged 13–17 who was authorized by a parent or guardian to ride alone.

Pay for Uber Teen rides is the same as UberX. There is no additional pay.

You are free to decline the requests, and you can block all teen ride requests in your ride preferences if you prefer not to do them.

Parents can track the ride in their own Uber app and they will be able to contact you via text or phone. If you get a call during a ride with a teen driver, it is probably from a parent.

Teens with approved teen accounts can bring other teens along with them as long as they are 13 or older with permission from their own parents or guardians.

Although Uber says that other teen riders must have permission to ride, there is no in-app feature or other mechanism to prove that the other teen riders have permission.

How to disable teen ride requests

In markets with teen profiles, you can filter out teen requests in your trip preferences. There are separate options for teen trips and teen orders.

On the home screen, tap the icon with two lines to open your preferences. Scroll to Trip filters and tap on Teen trips to turn teen rides off.

Protect yourself with the audio recording option

For your own safety and the safety of your riders, you can enable audio recording in the driver app settings.

The Uber driver app records and stores audio during your rides, and only Uber support can access the audio files.

Note that riders are notified when you enable audio recording.

Unaccompanied minors outside of Uber Teen are still prohibited

Solo teen riders are only permitted to ride if their account was created using the teen profile system.

If a rider looks underage and the request is not labeled as a teen rider, you can cancel the trip and select ‘unaccompanied minor’ as the reason.

See the full Uber for teen announcement for drivers