Sen. Ossoff Launches Inquiry into App Store Age Ratings to Help Protect Children Online

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff is pressuring Big Tech companies to crack down on apps that put kids at risk.

Today, Sen. Ossoff launched inquiries with Apple and Google about their app store age rating requirements and urged the tech companies to strengthen the default protections for minors and provide further transparency around staffing, reporting, enforcement, and metrics.

A recent report highlighted that developers play a significant role in determining app store age ratings, with little external review. The report also raises concerns that parental controls are heavily reliant on app age ratings, which can result in minors being exposed to harmful material online.

The same report documented an instance where the app store age rating for an app was quietly downgraded from 17+ to 12+ without clear justification, disrupting parental controls for families relying on the 17+ block to restrict access.

"Incorrect age ratings can pose dangers to minors, by facilitating minors' use of apps that enable communication with online predators or provide access to inappropriate sexual content or other harmful material. Child safety advocates have raised serious concerns that app store ratings may give parents a false sense of security and encourage minors to access content that many families reasonably expect to be restricted," Sen. Ossoff wrote.

Sen. Ossoff continues working to protect children online.

In April, Sen. Ossoff launched inquiries with Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, and X over tech companies' advertisement and distribution of "nudifying" apps that allow users to swiftly create explicit images of children and teenagers.

Last December, the U.S. Senate passed Sens. Ossoff and Chuck Grassley (R-IA)'s bipartisan Preventing Child Trafficking Act of 2025 to strengthen coordination between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to better stop child trafficking and protect kids.

In July 2025, Sen. Ossoff cosponsored the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, which would impose new requirements on digital platforms to protect children from being targeted online with harmful content.

In March 2025, Sen. Ossoff cosponsored the bipartisan Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) to limit use of children's information for individually targeted advertising.

In 2024, Sen. Ossoff's bipartisan REPORT Act with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) became law, which - for the first time - requires websites and social media platforms to report crimes involving Federal trafficking and enticement of children to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Since the law's enactment, NCMEC has seen a 952% increase in reports of child sex trafficking and a 77% increase in reports of online enticement of children.

In 2023, Sens. Ossoff and Grassley's bipartisan Preventing Child Sex Abuse Act of 2023 was signed into law, which strengthened Federal protections against the sexual abuse of children, including online exploitation.

Please find Sen. Ossoff's inquiries here with Apple and Google.

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