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App Store Age Checks: Why a Check at the Download Button Isn’t Enough

For years, lawmakers tried to make every social media app check its users’ ages, one platform at a time. Those laws have spent most of their lives tied up in court. So a new idea is spreading fast: check a child’s age once, at the app store, and let every app on the phone rely on that answer. Apple and Google are already doing this in Texas, and California, the UK and several other US states are moving the same way.

It’s a real step forward, and parents should welcome it. But an age check at the download button only guards the download button. Here’s what these laws actually do, where they stop, and how to cover the rest.

Where App Store Age Checks Stand

• Texas is first. Its App Store Accountability Act (SB 2420) requires app stores to check users’ ages and get a parent’s consent before a minor downloads an app or makes an in-app purchase. After a federal appeals court let the law take effect, Apple applied the rules to new Apple Accounts in Texas from 4 June 2026, and Google began passing age signals to apps for new Texas accounts too. The law is still being challenged in court.
• More states have copied it. Utah and Louisiana have passed similar App Store Accountability Acts, and Alabama’s takes effect in January 2027. A federal version has been introduced in Congress but not passed.
• California goes a level deeper. From 1 January 2027, its Digital Age Assurance Act requires the phone or computer’s operating system to ask for a user’s age when an account is set up, and to pass an age bracket (under 13, 13–15, 16–17 or 18+) to apps that request it.
• The UK is weighing it. The Online Safety Act requires Ofcom to report on children’s use of app stores, with the report due by January 2027. After that, the government can extend the Act’s duties to app stores.

Meanwhile, the older platform-by-platform approach hasn’t gone away. On 15 October, a federal appeals court lifted the order blocking Georgia’s social media age verification law, sending the case back to a lower court. In Ohio, after a judge permanently struck down the state’s parental consent law for social media, lawmakers began drafting app-store-level age checks instead.

Covering the Gaps at Home

The gaps above have one thing in common: they all involve a device reaching a website or service, whatever app or browser it’s using. That’s exactly where DNS filtering works. Before any app or website can load, the device has to look up where it lives. ShomerDNS refuses to answer for domains that shouldn’t be reached, so they simply don’t open.

• It covers the browser and the app alike. A blocked site stays blocked whether a child opens it in an app, a browser or a private window.
• It doesn’t care what age anyone typed in. There’s no account to lie on. A blocked domain stays blocked however old a profile claims to be.
• It covers apps already installed. Filtering applies to every app on the device, including the ones that were there before any new law.
• You set the standard. ShomerDNS already blocks large categories such as pornography, gambling, adult chat and AI companion apps. With a personal VPN and lists, you can block any other app or site your family doesn’t want, even one the app store rated suitable.

For a child’s own Android phone, Frum Phone brings both protections together under the parent’s control: it points the phone at ShomerDNS filtering and locks the DNS settings and app installs behind a PIN only you know. That’s the same gate an app store age check tries to build, except you hold the key and the setting can’t simply be switched off.

To be clear about the limits: DNS filtering works on whole sites and apps, not on individual posts or chats inside an app you’ve allowed. If an approved game has an open chat feature, filtering can’t remove the chat without blocking the whole game. That’s a decision only a parent can make, and our article on DNS filtering vs. parental controls explains how the different layers fit together.

A Practical Checklist for Parents

• Check whose account is on the phone. A child using a phone signed into a parent’s account gets an adult’s app store. Set the account up with the child’s real age.
• Don’t forget the browser. Whatever you’ve decided about an app, ask whether its website is reachable on the same device.
• Filter at the network. Set up ShomerDNS on your router so every device in the house is covered at once, including laptops and tablets.
• Lock it down on their own phone. Use Frum Phone on Android, or the ShomerDNS VPN, so filtering goes wherever the phone goes.
• Look inside approved apps. An age rating tells you who an app is meant for, not who your child will meet inside it. Check chat and messaging features yourself.

Moving age checks to the app store is a sensible idea, and it will stop some children from installing some apps they shouldn’t. But a phone is much more than its app store. Until the law catches up with the rest of the device, the most reliable protection is still the one you set at home.