In a new whitepaper published today, Apple outlined several tools it already offers to parents and developers to “help enhance child safety while safeguarding privacy. This includes Screen Time, Find My, Communication Saftey, Communication Limits, and more.
Over this year, Apple is introducing new features to build on its commitment to user privacy, security, and safety for children:
- Make it even easier for parents to set up Child Accounts that underlie many of our parental controls.
- Put parents in control by allowing them to share information about the age range of their kids with apps to enable developers to provide only age-appropriate content, all without needing to share their birthdate or other sensitive information.
- And further enhance parents’ insight and control over their kids’ experiences by updating our age ratings, adding more useful information on product pages, and making browsing safer on the App Store.
Child Accounts
First, Apple is building on its Child Accounts feature with several key improvements. First, the company is streamlining the process of creating those Child Accounts in the first place.
In iOS 18.4, which is currently available in beta, Apple has added a new “Age Range” step to the setup process of a new iPhone or iPad. On this screen, users will select the age range of the person who will use the device. Apple will then use the information to “set up parental controls and safety features.”
- Child: 12 or younger
- Teen: 13 to 17
- Adult: 18 or older
If parents prefer to wait until later to finish setting up a Child Account, Apple says that “child-appropriate default settings will still be enabled on the device.”
“This way, a child can immediately begin to use their iPhone or iPad safely, and parents can be assured that child safety features will be active in the meantime,” Apple explains. “This means even more kids will end up using devices configured to maximize child safety with parental controls.”
Starting later this year, Apple says that parents will be able to “easily correct the age that is associated with their kid’s account if they previously did not set it up correctly.”
Once they do, parents of kids under 13 will be prompted to connect their kid’s account to their family group (if they’re not already connected), the account will be converted to a Child Account, and parents will be able to utilize Apple’s parental control options—with Apple’s default age-appropriate settings applied as a backstop.
Sharing age rage with developers
Later this year, Apple will also add a new way for parents to provide developers with information about the age range of their kids. Developers will be able to tap into a new Declared Range API to request information about the age range associated with a Child Account.
This is where things get interesting. One argument made by companies such as Meta and Tinder is that app marketplace developers, like Apple, should be the ones required to verify a user’s age – commonly referred to as “age assurance.” Just this week, a report in The Wall Street Journal outlined that nine states have proposed to make Apple and Google responsible for age verification.
According to Apple, however, that responsibility should largely fall to the developers.
Apple says the right place to address age verification and prioritize data minimization is on a per-app level, not on the marketplace level. The company likens this to how alcohol sales in a mall require ID verification at the store level rather than asking every mall visitor for their date of birth.
At Apple, we believe in data minimization—collecting and using only the minimum amount of data required to deliver what you need.
This is especially important for the issue of “age assurance,” which covers a variety of methods that establish a user’s age with some level of confidence. Some apps may find it appropriate or even legally required to use age verification, which confirms user age with a high level of certainty—often through collecting a user’s sensitive personal information (like a government-issued ID)—to keep kids away from inappropriate content. But most apps don’t. That’s why the right place to address the dangers of age-restricted content online is the limited set of websites and apps that host that kind of content. After all, we ask merchants who sell alcohol in a mall to verify a buyer’s age by checking IDs—we don’t ask everyone to turn their date of birth over to the mall if they just want to go to the food court.
Apple believes requiring age verification at the app marketplace level isn’t data minimization. For example, Apple would have to collect sensitive personal information from all users, even if they don’t access age-restricted apps.
With the Declared Range API, developers will be able to prompt the parent to share the age range associated with their Child Accounts. This gives developers an “additional resource to provide age-appropriate content for their users.” Parents will have full control over sharing that age range information, and the feature won’t provide kids’ actual birthdates.
For apps that need additional information to verify a user’s age, the burden will be on those individual developers:
This protects privacy by keeping parents in control of their kids’ sensitive personal information while minimizing the amount of information shared with third parties. The limited subset of developers who actually need to collect a government-issued ID or other additional sensitive personal information from users to meet their age-verification obligations can still do so. All in all, it gives developers a helpful addition to the set of resources they can choose from—including other third-party tools—to fulfill their responsibility to deliver age-appropriate experiences in their apps.
Updated global age ranges
Currently, Apple’s age ratings system has four thresholds. Later this year, Apple will expand its age rating thresholds with more granularity:
- 4+ years old
- 9+ years old
- 13+ years old
- 16+ years old
- 18+ years old
These age ratings are integrated into things like the App Store, Screen Time, Ask to Buy, and more.
More tidbits
Apple has a few more tidbits to share:
Currently, to help users make informed choices about which apps to download, we ask developers to provide key information on their App Store product pages—including details about in-app purchases and privacy practices through our Privacy Nutrition Labels. To further enhance transparency, we will highlight whether apps contain user-generated content or advertising capabilities that could introduce age-inappropriate material. Developers will also have the option to indicate if their app includes content controls, such as parental controls or age verification, that help restrict access to content exceeding its age rating.
We also want to give parents greater control over their kids’ online experiences on the App Store. Today, Apple’s Content Restrictions in Screen Time already prevent kids from downloading apps that exceed the age ratings set by their parents. But we’re taking it a step further—later this year, when kids browse the App Store, they won’t see apps with age ratings higher than their parents’ settings in the places where we feature apps, such as the Today, Games, and Apps tabs, as well as in our editorial stories and collections.
Full whitepaper
Apple has shared a new whitepaper detailing all of these announcements. You can find it on Apple’s website or embedded below.
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