My son is 14 years old, and I thought he is now old enough to have his own Steam account. My idea was to let him explore Steam through a family child account.

Together with him, I created a Steam account on our family laptop. Because he is under the age of 16, I had to confirm the account creation as his legal guardian.

Afterwards, I created a family group in my own Steam account. I noticed that only friends can be invited to a family group. I added my son to my friends list, he accepted the friend request. Then I invited him to the family group (he is the first and only member of the group so far).

He signed into his Steam account on the family laptop and tried to join via the account details. He got the error: “You are ineligible to join this Steam Family at this time, as your Steam activity doesn’t indicate that you are in the same household as other members of this family.”

I thought the error might be caused by the browser logins on the same family laptop, so I asked him to try joining on his Chromebook via the link in the invitation email. Same error.

I supposed the error was due to my son not having any Steam activity, since the account was created several minutes before the invitation. So I added €5 Steam Wallet credit to his account and we bought a game he like to play. I then canceled the first invitation and created a new one. Same error again: "You are ineligible to join this Steam Family at this time, as your Steam activity doesn’t indicate that you are in the same household as other members of this family.”

Steam Support told me that they cannot provide specific details on how the restriction works and that all available information can be found in the official Steam Families FAQ.

I could not find any information in the FAQ about whether there are special requirements or settings for newly created child accounts.

Is there any way to add my son’s new child account to the family group? Could the account be added after a time of steam activity (playing the game we bought) or will the account never join the group. I don’t want him to use a “full” Steam account—I want to use the parental controls available in the family group.

As far as I understand, I cannot do this because his account cannot join the family, correct?

Has anyone had similar issues with newly created child accounts? Any tips are welcome.