Apple details improvements to child accounts, App Store age-filtering
In a whitepaper posted to Apple’s developer site entitled “Helping Protect Kids Online”, the company details several improvements it’s rolling out in upcoming software updates, including making it easier to set up child accounts, providing age ranges to developers, and filtering content on the App Store.
Additionally, Apple is adding the ability to correct the age-range of child accounts:
Second, starting later this year, 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.
Many of these additions are welcome ones for parents navigating managing accounts for their kids. 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.
It’s also worth noting that these announcements are happening against the backdrop of more stringent age-verification laws enacted in U.S. states like Texas and Oklahoma. Critics of those laws contend that they unfairly target LGBTQ+ communities. Apple, for its part, says that it holds to a standard of data minimization, not sharing any more information than is necessary. So, for example, offering developers access to the age range of a user—with the consent of a parent—rather than providing a birthdate.