A new one published by child safety groups Heat Initiative and ParentsTogether Action, details the alarming presence of inappropriate apps classified as suitable for children aged four and over in Apple’s App Store. The groups worked with a researcher to review as many apps as possible within 24 hours and said they ultimately identified over 200 apps that had “questionable content or features” given the age for which they were rated. – including chat for strangers and AI girlfriend apps, gaming apps with sexual or violent requests and images, and AI-powered apps for assessing appearance. Engadget has reached out to Apple for comment and will update this story upon hearing back.
The research focused on apps with assigned ratings of 4+, 9+ and 12+ in categories considered “risky”: chat (including AI and stranger chat apps), beauty, nutrition and weight loss, unfiltered internet access ( Apps for accessing banned school websites) and gaming. Among the findings, the report said at least 24 sex games and 9 stranger chat apps were found to be suitable for children in these age groups. The investigation also identified 40 apps for unfiltered internet access and 75 apps about beauty, body image and weight loss with these age ratings, as well as 28 shooter and crime games. According to Heat Initiative, the approximately 200 offending apps discovered during the 24-hour investigation were downloaded a total of over 550 million times.
In total, about 800 apps were reviewed, and the research found that some categories were more likely than others to contain apps with unreasonably low ratings. Third-party chat apps and games were rated “less than suitable for children,” the report said. In most cases they were 17+. But in the weight loss and unfiltered internet access categories, “almost all apps tested were approved for children ages 4 and up.” The report calls on Apple to do better with child safety measures in the App Store and calls on the company to enforce app age ratings to review external reviewers before making them available for download and to make its age rating process transparent to consumers. You can read the full report, Rotten Ratings: 24 Hours in the Apple App Store, Here.
