There are things you can do as an adult that you can’t do as a child. You can drive a car. You can attend a rave. You can have a Paddlepop any time of the day because you can also buy one with your own money, and then eat that banana, chocolate, or rainbow ice cream when you want to, will power be damned.
And now you’ll need to be an adult in Australia to download some apps.
It’s a change developers in Australia and a few other parts of the world are set to deal with, blocking apps from anyone who isn’t verified as 18 or over.
Confirmed as part of age requirements for developers using the Apple App Store, the change means users in Australia, Brazil, Singapore, and two states in the US — Louisiana and Utah — will now need to confirm their own age likely through their payment options, but can also connect it using a declared age range, something Apple has support for in its service.
That could mean that on a family account, even if parents give permission to their child to use an app or service, if a child’s age range is incompatible, they may not be able to get the app.
While not technically connected with the social media ban, Apple’s change may not play nicely with it.
For instance, game chat service Discord isn’t in the social media ban, but has an age rating of 18+, making downloads of the app no longer accessible for anyone under the age. The same goes for Meta’s Messenger app, formerly Facebook Messenger, which is another 18+ app on the App Store.
Curiously, Reddit is also marked for users aged 18 and over, and included in the social media ban, even though someone aged 16 and over should be able to use the app and service when they’re no longer covered by the regulation.
You can see where this will get confusing fast.
Right now, the rules are new and we’re not quite sure where they’ll be flexed, nor to by how much. But much like the social media age assurance regulation, we suspect we’ll hear more about how this works and the lengths it goes very, very soon.
