While it is known and understood that ride-share passengers must be above 18, this doesn't stop teenagers from trying to get a ride with a ride-share car. In fact, many teenagers bordering their 18th year will try to finance their way into a ride.
Here are some options to consider when dealing with teenagers.
Obscurity
If you are not a great stickler for rules and don't mind the legal ramifications involved with driving a teen, then be sure never ask the passenger what their age is. Once you ask them for their age and they answer truthfully, you will have to decline to take them. Obscurity of age is an issue that you have to be wary of. The only defense you have in case of an incident is; you did not consider or think that the passenger was underage, and did not ask them in order not to hurt their feelings.
Teen Rating Knowledge
While teens are exceptionally clever and inquisitive, it does not mean they understand that they should rate your ride five stars. If you don't get good rating feedbacks from your passengers, your ratings will drop. So, you need to explain to all your passengers, especially your teen ones that star ratings are highly important. You must also explain to them that a four-star rating is bad, in fact, anything under five star is bad as far as you are concerned. By explaining how the rating system works and how the ratings only upgrade after every 500 passenger feedbacks, they will understand and award you five stars. Unless you did something to make them think otherwise.
Conversational Topics
Now I don't expect you to have great insight into all teen topics, but if you do decide to take the constant risk and be an Uber teen passenger driver, you should read up on your social media issues that are interesting teens. Also, when a teen gets into your car, engage them in talking about what interests them. Find out as much as you can from every passenger. Knowing teens will give you a deeper understanding what teens are into and make your rides much more interesting. Alos note, the variety of issues teens are into can be from track athletics to mobile app development, beauty and hair topics to the manga.
Teen Entertainment
Many teens see an Uber ride as a chance to jam out to their music. This is OK for most situations, but after a while can be a headache. There are unfortunate incidents, especially when parents don't know how their kids act in public. Sometimes music issues can get heated if the passengers don't like your music choices. You can defer to their choice, asking them to pick a channel or connect a device, or you can explain to them that this is your car and they are passengers as if in a cab. They don't make decisions about in-ride entertainment. Once an issue like this comes up, it can become heated and could cause a low rating issue to arise both ways. Your best bet is after you drop them off, you call their parent and explain the situation, try not to go to the level of threatening a low passenger rating, since this will drag a reciprocal low driver rating. It would be better to agree on a no-show and cancel the ride. That way both sides don't suffer the low rating issue. At the same time, ask the parent to discuss ride-share music issues with their kids to avoid future issues from reoccurring.
Don't educate teens
Don't be patronizing, and don't try to educate them, you will only cause them to become belligerent, and this will, in turn, escalate to a bad experience. Also, remember, teens should not be in your car unaccompanied, so don't expect Uber to educate them either, as far as Uber is concerned, there are no teens in the world, only adult customers.
Keep emotional distance
If you have a bad experience in one ride, don't let that color your next ride. Framing is imperative, no matter how bad an experience you had with one customer, don't let it influence your attitude to another.
Keep it cool
You must remember that teens are bags of chemically explosive emotions, young men are beginning to experience their sexual identities and young women are aware of theirs. Also, teens are dealing with a lot of shit in their lives, and since they are teens, only their lives are important, no one understands them. Do you see where this is leading too? So, play it cool with teens, and try not to aggravate what should be an interesting but eventless ride.
The Jilted generation
Refusing a teen passenger is a legal prerogative and is the right thing to do. However, we live in an emotional world, and by refusing a ride, you can sometimes create a bigger issue a parent or teen that will make up some bad stuff about you. Since you haven't taken the ride yet, your dash cam is not recording anything; you have no proof but your words against theirs. Don't; be fooled by appearances, if you receive a teen rider and you want to refuse, make sure you have some recording device operating, so you can record the conversation for future use. Turning on the dash cam before arriving at a suspected teen ride pick up will also be a useful bet to count on.
Conclusions
Teesn are interesting, fresh and usually fun to have. We understand the legal ramifications of taking teens unaccompanied, but if you are willing to take the risk, just go and enjoy the moment. They are usually really fun and interesting rides
