Apple has announced a range of new features aimed at making iPhones and other devices safer for kids.
The new tools will make it easier for parents to set up child accounts so that they will be able to use existing parental controls, for instance. It will also let parents more easily share information about their children’s age, and new ways for them to see information about the kinds of content that their kids are accessing.
It comes amid increasing concern that children could be at risk by using smart devices and the wide variety of often unregulated content that they can potentially be used to access.
Apple acknowledged those risks in an announcement that said the new tools had been built in recognition of the fact that “the digital world is increasingly complex and the risks to families are ever-changing, including the proliferation of age-inappropriate content and excessive time on social media and other platforms”.
The most prominent new feature is a new set-up tool that will allow parents to more easily sign-up with a child account. Apple says that will make it more easy for parents to start their kids on a new device – and should mean that they are able to start using it more safely straight away.
Other new features compliment those accounts. Adults can now more easily register and change their children's age, and Apple said that it will update its age ratings, add more information on product pages and make it safer to browse the App Store.
In a white paper announcing the new features, Apple said it was “staying true to our core values of protecting both user privacy and safety”. The conflict between those two goals has proven problematic for Apple in the past.
In 2021, for instance, Apple said that it would introduce new automated systems that would scan users’ photos for child sexual abuse material. Apple said that it had built the feature with privacy in mind, so that the company would not be able to see the photos, for instance.
But it immediately received criticism from security experts and privacy campaigners, who said that it could be abused to compromise users’ safety. It initially said that it was pausing the rollout and it later abandoned the project.
