Basing it on the profile option to share that information with others could help with this issue. If I allow a registered user to look at my account profile and see the information, why would I worry about letting them search for my profile based on that same information. Real Name, location, gender and birthday are already hidden from unregistered users looking at profiles.
What I would suggest is in addition to "Hide Age" add "Hide Gender" and "Hide Location" so that for the cautious they can still contribute to the family demographic information but prevent other users from looking at that information. And this same flag would prevent them being included it the search functionality.
*Edit* I just noticed there is already a "Keep personal information confidential" flag that I assume prevents other family members from seeing those details in your profile while still allowing them to be used for the general family demographics. This flag could be used to prevent yourself from being found via members searching.
» Edited on: 2014-02-27 11:44:13
» Edited on: 2014-02-27 11:47:26