Australian users of iPhones, iPads and Macs have been blocked from accessing gambling and other R18+ apps unless they confirm their age using “reasonable methods”, the company has announced as it floats tighter content restrictions and expanded age verification tools.
Users in Australia, Brazil and Singapore must now confirm their adult status before downloading such apps, Apple said, with the App Store evaluating users’ age and blocking downloads “automatically” – although it didn’t clarify what “reasonable methods” means.
Apple had until 9 September to implement the changes in Australia, but with global requirements coming into force from this year, it’s turned the three countries into proving grounds for age assurance technologies that don’t require birthdates but provide ‘signals’ indicating a user’s age.
App developers can also use the new Declared Age Range API to prompt users for information to “provide developers with a helpful signal about a user’s age”, letting them make their own age determinations if required by specific laws.
Age information is provided by end users – and the API, which is available across iOS, iPadOS and macOS, prompts users for permission to share their age range with the app, with parents given the option about whether and when to share a child’s age information.
Developers are “solely responsible for ensuring compliance with associated laws or regulations that may apply” to their apps, Apple warned as it moves to support global laws that are evolving to restrict children’s access to adult, gambling, violent and other content.
The age restrictions will also be applied to new users in the US states of Utah from 6 May and Louisiana from 1 July, when new laws in that state take effect four years after it became the first to mandate age verification for users accessing adult content online.
Standardising methods for age verification
Apple introduced age verification tools early last year, but its latest updates are a significant step as it acquiesces to repeated calls – from Meta, Spotify, Tinder parent company Match group and others – that its ubiquitous devices be the gatekeepers of user age information.
Verifying users’ age within device operating systems – Android phones have their own age verification process – will make it easier for app developers to comply with rapidly changing laws by querying the device about the users’ age.
The new access controls lend weight to the Australian government’s recently revised app classification guidelines, which were amended in September 2024 to require an R18+ classification for video games with simulated gambling elements.
Apple had until 9 September 2026 to implement age assurance in Australia for access to adult apps. Image: Shutterstock
Apple’s blocks affect some of Australia’s most popular apps including games like Grand Theft Auto, Disco Elysium – The Final Cut and Mortal Kombat Mobile, but would also affect those gambling related titles like Slotomania, Heart of Vegas, or DoubleU Casino.
Many others will escape the block until they’re reclassified correctly, with a recent Sydney University study finding that 20 per cent of the top 100 games on Apple’s App Store – and almost half on Google Play – have been given the wrong age label.
“This is a systemic failure,” Dr Marcus Carter said at the time, noting that “the rules are there, but they’re not being enforced” – and that penalties of $6,000 “are too weak to drive change.”
Authorities backing their bark with bite
As Apple’s age controls are refined, they also promise a more consistent way of enabling developers of social media apps to comply with Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) laws, which require users to be at least 16 to access such apps.
Laws have left individual app developers to figure out their own way to block workarounds and verify users’ ages, leading to widespread use of questionable AI selfie tools.
Apple’s involvement in app age verification may also wind back some of the unintended consequences of previous age bans, such as adult site Pornhub’s campaign to block all users in 23 US states rather than comply with their age verification requirements.
That site also began blocking new user signups in the UK this month, eight months after that country’s Online Safety Act imposed new requirement that adult sites to verify users’ age with stronger measures such as credit card checks or face scanning.
It’s a stronger measure than the symbolic ‘Are you over 18?’ tickboxes that most sites have used to date – and UK regulator Ofcom is taking it seriously, fining adult site 8579 LLC some $2.6 million (£1.35 million) this month because it had not implemented age checks to several of its sites.
