Apple, the popular iPhone-making company, announced recently the introduction of “Age Assurance” technology to safeguard children’s privacy. Different U.S. states and federal regulators explore a variety of ways of letting parents communicate their children’s ages to app developers while downloading such an app.
Testimony divides lawmakers as to whether the burden of child verification lies with the apps or with the app stores themselves. Through this new age assurance technology, the parents will be able to enter their child’s real age when creating an account.
The further decision becomes that of the parents whether they allow their child to share a ‘declared age range’ before downloading third-party apps. In addition, parents can disable this age-range sharing feature as well. This option will allow children to give an age range instead of their precise birth date or government identification details.
Apple has always been a consumer privacy company. It also lets them forego the sharing of very sensitive information by choosing an age range. According to Apple, there are very few apps and content that keep an age restriction. Therefore, applying the verification of the ages of all the users through app stores would push all those people to disclose sensitive information even if they never use such apps.
The concern of how to suitably restrict access to applications to under-18 users has been an age-old issue. Lawmakers in states like Utah and South Carolina are currently mulling over a piece of legislation requesting app stores, among which are Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS, to verify the age of the users.
Other companies such as Meta Platforms have consistently expected app stores to authenticate the ages of their users first before downloading. A representative from Meta stated that parents want to have the final say over which applications their children are to have access to.
Therefore, the company also supports legislation for precise age declaration and parental consent before downloading applications.
