Are the ‘Safe’ Apps Your Child Uses Actually ‘Inapproriate’ for Them?
By Movieguide® Contributor
A new report finds that Apple’s app store offers hundreds of inappropriate apps, all rated as suitable for young children.
PCMag reported that nonprofits Parents Together Action and Heat Initiative “reviewed 800 apps in 24 hours and uncovered 200 apps with inappropriate content rated as ‘safe’ for children 12 and younger, and in some cases as young as four.”
Heat Initiative is a “collective effort of concerned child safety experts and advocates encouraging leading technology companies to combat child sexual abuse on their platforms,” according to its website, while Parents Together Action “is a parent-led, people-powered education and advocacy organization.”
READ MORE: DECEPTIVE AGE RATINGS APPEAR ON APPLE APP STORE, REPORT FINDS
“[There are] 25 chat apps with a combined 37 million downloads, including chat apps that connect kids with strangers, anonymous chat apps, and AI chat apps,” the report reads. “Examples include an ‘AI girlfriend app,’ and a kids chat app users say is ‘nothing but pedophiles.’”
The nonprofits encouraged Apple to “institute an independent, third-party review and verification of the age ratings of apps before they are made available to children in the Apple App Store.”
“Just like movies, television programs, and video games, these experts would assess the risk to children and give an age rating in the best interest of kids — not the best interest of Apple or the app developer companies’ wallets,” they wrote.
The report continued, “Apple has promised parents and kids time and time again that their app store is a safe place for kids, and that their ratings are accurate and easy to use. In reality, the Apple App Store is full of risky, harmful, and inappropriate apps that sit beside helpful ones with the same age rating. As long as the people issuing app age ratings have a profit motive to make them available to the widest possible audience, this problem — and its devastating impacts on families — will persist.”
“American kids have made Apple billions of dollars from the apps they download,” they concluded. “Apple owes it to them to give them an app store with independent, third party ratings they and their parents can trust.”
READ MORE: META WANTS APP STORES TO VERIFY USER AGE: ‘A TRICKY TASK’
- Content: +3Share:
- Content: +1