By Jim Kohlenberger
It’s no secret that our children are now part of the most connected generation in history. At school, teachers harness technology as a learning accelerator and opportunity equalizer – giving young minds access to the entire universe of human knowledge. But at home, as social media plays an increasingly pervasive role in children’s lives, parents and policymakers alike are looking for ways to ensure a safer and more trusted online ecosystem.
Through our survey of parents, our kids safety research and analysis of efforts to empower parents, we’ve seen how important it is for digital leaders to build a more trusted future where children can thrive online in safe environments by taking advantage of a child centered design approach.
As a think tank we often find ourselves critiquing policymakers and businesses for efforts that undermine trust, but when someone takes steps to elevate trust, we think it’s important to recognize that progress as well. That’s why we were especially delighted to see Apple unveil some especially powerful new tools to elevate trust and increase safety. These tools build on their proven child-centered design approach, and make them even more responsive to parents, more effective for children, and far easier for app developers to integrate to ensure they can work across the entire mobile ecosystem.
While these new innovative and intuitive tools build upon the vast array of trusted tools already integrated into their phones, Apple takes their tools to the next level in a way that:
- Empowers families: Since every child is unique, they are empowering parents with the ability to tailor solutions to meet their family’s unique needs.
- Follows the evidence: Tools are grounded in expert clinical research to help ensure effectiveness and foster parents’ trust.
- Strikes a balance: Provides parents with a balanced approach that protects kids without blocking their ability to learn, create, and connect.
- Shares the responsibility: Recognizes that protecting children online requires a shared effort. Families, educators, tech companies, and lawmakers all have a role in creating a digital environment that puts children’s well-being first.
These are foundational truths, but two especially exciting things jumped out at us right away about their announcements:
- Incorporating Real-Time Expert Guidance. Apple, for the first time, is integrating real-time, expert-backed guidance directly into its parental controls. Grounded in Healthy Digital Habits developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, they incorporate tailored recommendations that can help parents make informed, personalized decisions about their family’s digital habits, and put the tailored recommendations right where parents can use them.
- Launching Ready-to-Build Developer Toolkits. Apple is fast-tracking app safety with a dedicated hub (developer.apple.com/kids) and ready-made toolboxes that developers can instantly tap into to access everything they need to bake these advanced, trusted safety features directly into their apps today.
At a time when one in seven parents are concerned about what their children are seeing, hearing and doing online, Apple’s new announcements help parents safeguard:
- Who they communicate with
- What their kids see and do online
- When their children are online
- How parents, developers and policymakers move forward
So here is a rundown on the who, what, when and how of their announcements.
WHAT Kids See and Do Online
What Apps Kids Access. Apps can help kids learn and grow, but research also shows that there are some apps — like social media apps – that are not appropriate for kids under 13. Now when parents set up a new child account on an iPhone, it is set up in a focused way from the start to allow access to only the handful of recommended age-appropriate apps that they are comfortable with. They can select a few essential apps, a recommended set, or the specific ones they want. Parents can add or subtract from the list of apps as their children grow, and their needs change. But oftentimes, parents need help and guidance for which apps are appropriate. They want expert input into what may be suitable for their kids.
One of the most exciting features that Apple is rolling out provides parents with real-time guidance on app appropriateness, based on the American Academy of Pediatrics digital media guidelines for screen time and social media and combined with app store age ratings. So, when they make that list and check it twice, they know which apps will be naughty and which ones will be nice.
What Apps Kids Download. But sometimes a child wants to download more apps. Parents already have access to a popular tool that lets them choose to be notified when their child wants to download a new app that is not on the approved list so the parent can approve or decline the request.
Now with the help of the app store’s age rating system, parents will get immediate guidance about the specific app the child is asking to download so they can make more informed choices about an app’s appropriateness before it can be downloaded.
What Websites Kids Browse. Apple has long had built-in parental control features that can block websites with adult content across Safari and third-party browsers for children. Our Trusted Future survey found 80% of parents appreciate being able to easily block mature content on their children’s phone. But for younger kids, a parent can also choose to limit web access to a limited set of pre-approved websites instead. This completely locks down the browser so it can only access the specific URLs entered (like pbskids.org).
Now, like its Ask to Download feature, Apple is introducing a new tool called “Ask to Browse” to give parents even more control. This new feature notifies and prompts parents if a child seeks to browse a website that is not on the approved URL list, or that might be deemed as inappropriate. It allows a parent to review the site in advance, and to decide in real time whether to allow or deny access. These tools are on by default for kids under 13, and Apple has built it into their WebKit so it can work with any other browser built on this framework too.
WHO Kids Communicate With
“Don’t talk to strangers” is often one of the first lessons parents teach children to keep them safe. In the online world, parents need to trust that their kid’s communication is protected – that it keeps online predators, and anonymous cyberbullies locked out of their personal space. But limiting who kids communicate with can be especially hard in games and other platforms that are designed around communication – until now. Apple created an innovative new tool that lets parents decide who their kids can communicate with. Like the other tools, parents can start with a limited list of who their child can communicate with – for example limiting access to immediate family members only. Then as they grow older and as needs change, parents can expand this list, for example to close friends or teammates.
Now parents have a new tool that Apple announced that asks the parent for permission anytime a child requests to chat, follow, or add another user that is not on the approved contact list. This works by default with Apple’s built in messages, phone and facetime. But importantly, Apple has also built an API into their PermissionKit developer toolbox so this functionality can be integrated into and work seamlessly across any social media app, game, or messaging app — creating a consistent way parents can manage who their children communicate with across the entire platform.
Stranger danger and Content blurring. Sometimes it’s also important to protect what kids see and send. Through groundbreaking technology that Apple has already introduced, their on-device machine learning can act as a digital shield, automatically detecting and blurring explicit photos and videos before they reach your child’s eyes—whether it comes through Messages, AirDrop, or a FaceTime message. It’s game-changing technology that works anytime they receive or attempt to send images containing nudity — the image is blurred, a warning is displayed, the child is given an option to block the contact and is given a quick-escape button to immediately message a trusted adult for help. Importantly to protect privacy, Apple never sees these photos because the scanning happens entirely on the device. At a time when 70% of teenage users are being exposed to violent content online in the past year (mostly through social media), what is especially exciting is that this popular content blurring feature is now being extended beyond nudity, to also blur gore and violence too.
WHEN Kids Are Online
Kids often lack the impulse control to self-regulate their time online against intrusions like infinite scrolling or apps designed to captivate attention. Screen Time limits have become an especially powerful and popular tool for parents by giving them ways to set limits on the amount of time that their kids can spend each day. By capping app usage, kids may disconnect, find more balance in their life with the physical world, and perhaps even focus on studying.
Our Trusted Future survey, found 67% of parents appreciate the tools and their ability to keep track of how much time their kids spend using different apps, and 69% appreciate the ability to set a specific time, like bedtime, when apps and notifications are blocked.
But now Apple is taking it to the next level. They are allowing parents to set specific time allowances for different types of apps like entertainment, games and social media. Importantly, the feature recommends time limits for each feature category based on recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics Healthy Digital Habits guidance.
And because the time limits a parent might set for a school day may not be the same as those on a weekend, or when a family is on vacation, Apple thought of that too. They built new features that give parents new flexible ways to better target limits for the way kids actually live their lives. These tools recognize that parents may have different priorities for the limited number of apps their kids’ access can access during the school day, the education apps they may need during homework time, versus the sports or entertainment apps they may want on the weekend or when on vacation.
Devices in the classroom should support learning. At a time when parents want to maintain the ability to communicate with their kids at school (especially in an emergency), but parents and teachers also have concerns about children being distracted in class by their phones, these new features address both issues. They allow parents to communicate with kids at school if they need to, while also allowing them to set strict limits on what a child can do with their phone during school hours. We think parents and teachers will celebrate these features.
HOW Parents, Developers and Policymakers Can Move Forward
These are major advancements for parents and kids. To build on this progress and maximize their adoption, we offer a few additional thoughts on how to further advance the ball with parents, developers, and policymakers:
How we make things even easier for parents. While surveys show parents appreciate innovative parental control tools, they also feel they have the primary responsibility for managing access to age-appropriate content but often don’t know what they are or how to use them. Apple is bridging this gap with a new, one-stop hub – Apple.com/child-safety — giving parents direct access to the resources they need to keep their kids safe. For example, if they haven’t done so already it explains how to set up Child Accounts that are required for children under 13.
How developers can act to incorporate features now. The tools Apple announced today become even more effective when they are seamlessly integrated across the many apps that make up the app-ecosystem. Through Apple’s new kids toolkit hub (developer.apple.com/kids), app developers can access ready-made toolboxes to build trusted experiences today. They can, for example, incorporate features like Sensitive Content Analysis to detect and alert users to nudity, gore or violence in images and videos in their apps before displaying them onscreen. They can also incorporate the communication safety tools that allow children to ask for their parents’ permission to communicate with others in an app or game anytime a child requests to chat, follow, or add another user. Developers play an important role in protecting children, and have already built a range of parental control tools into their apps. Because every app has a responsibility to protect the kids that use their apps, developers can also take advantage of the Declared Age Range API to create a tailored age-appropriate experience for its users. We urge developers to begin integrating these features now, so their apps are child-ready for the iOS 27 rollout this fall.
How policymakers can support smart policy approaches. These new tools remind us that protecting children online requires shared, multi-faceted efforts—not silver bullet solutions that lack evidence and expert clinical research. While proposals like the App Store Accountability Act are unworkable, likely unconstitutional, and fail to adequately protect children, there are better paths forward. The bipartisan Parents over Platforms Act for example offers a balanced, privacy-preserving ecosystem approach that builds on existing features, and that surveys show parents broadly support. Coupled with a broad national privacy framework, this is the winning solution families need right now.
Big kudos to Apple for another big leap forward to better protect kids. It’s these kinds of advancements that remind us that to enable a more trusted future, we need more companies who are willing to invest in technologies and tools that make our digital ecosystem a more trusted ecosystem.