iOS Declared Age Range API
Apple on Thursday announced a range of new initiatives designed to help parents and developers create a safer experience for kids and teens using Apple devices. In addition to easier setup of child accounts, parents will now be able to share information about their kids’ ages, which can then be accessed by app developers to provide age-appropriate content. The App Store will also introduce a new set of age ratings that give developers and App Store users alike a more granular understanding of an app’s appropriateness for a given age range.
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Nine U.S. states, including Utah and South Carolina, have recently proposed bills that would require app store operators like Apple to check kids’ ages in order to get parental consent before minors can download apps, for instance.
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Several of the changes for child accounts are available in the public beta of iOS 18.4, out now. The ability to make updates to the age of a child account after it’s already created, as well as the Declared Age Range API, Age Ratings and App Store updates will be available later this year, Apple says.
I think this makes sense. It’s not clear to me whether Apple is just getting ahead of legislation or sort of had a change of heart. It still kind of sets up a strawman in describing its reluctance.
The company is developing a habit of sending PDF links directly to media outlets to circulate.
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This is a direct response to a proposed U.S. law that would require Apple — and Google — to verify ages at the App Store level; it says its solution is an effective alternative. It may well be, but I do not buy this line of argument. It could, for example, wait to verify a user’s age until they attempt to download an app where it would be needed. Also, while Apple’s own data collection would be minimized by hypothetically offloading that responsibility onto third-parties, it would increase the number of copies of this sensitive information floating around.
There’s still a lot of work to be done, however. As the father of a two-year-old who gets only limited and controlled access to an iPad, I’ve run into numerous frustrations trying to both maintain appropriate security practices and let me conveniently manage the device. There are also numerous issues with critical features like Screen Time, which suffers from both inaccuracies in its measurements as well as methods for circumvention.
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