Apple announces new features to help protect children, including a revamped age rating system for the App Store

Apple has just announced a series of new tools, features and improvements that it says will “help parents protect their kids in a way that is designed around privacy”.

One of the biggest changes is an overhaul of the age rating system that is used in the App Store, with the number of categories expanding to five. But this is far from being the only changes Apple is unleashing.

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The company has published a document titled Helping Protect Kids Online. While there is something of a predictable self-congratulatory tone to it, there is a lot of reassuring information for parents as well.

Apple says that this year it plans to take a three-pronged approach to boosting child-protection. It lists the following upcoming changes:

• 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.

The privacy focused method of sharing age range data will be of interest to many parents. Apple explains:

Later this year, Apple will be giving parents a new way to provide developers with information about the age range of their kids -- enabling parents to help developers deliver an age-appropriate experience in their apps while protecting kids’ privacy. Through this new feature, parents can allow their kids to share the age range associated with their Child Accounts with app developers. If they do, developers will be able to utilize a Declared Age Range API to request this information, which can serve as an additional resource to provide age-appropriate content for their users. As with everything we do, the feature will be designed around privacy and users will be in control of their data. The age range will be shared with developers if and only if parents decide to allow this information to be shared, and they can also disable sharing if they change their mind. And it won’t provide kids’ actual birthdates.

The changes to age ratings are also interesting. The new categories are coming later this year and will split apps into five age ranges -- 4 years and up, 9 years and up, 13 years and up, 16 years and up, and 18 years and up.

The full plans can be seen here.

Image credit: Frank Harms / Dreamstime.com