{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/press-releases/sen-ossoff-launches-inquiry-into-app-store-age-ratings-to-help-protect-children-online/", "Sen. Ossoff Launches Inquiry into App Store Age Ratings to Help Protect Children Online", "2026-07-31", "2026", "2026-07", "Democrat", "Senate", "GA", "Jon Ossoff", "O000174", "www.ossoff.senate.gov", "ossoff", "https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/press-releases/?jsf=jet-engine:press-list", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2014 U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff is pressuring Big Tech companies to crack down on apps that put kids at risk.\n\nToday, 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.\n\nA 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.\n\nThe 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.\n\n\u201cIncorrect age ratings can pose dangers to minors, by facilitating minors\u2019 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,\u201d Sen. Ossoff wrote.\n\nSen. Ossoff continues working to protect children online.\n\nIn April, Sen. Ossoff launched inquiries with Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, and X over tech companies\u2019 advertisement and distribution of \u201cnudifying\u201d apps that allow users to swiftly create explicit images of children and teenagers.\n\nLast December, the U.S. Senate passed Sens. Ossoff and Chuck Grassley (R-IA)\u2019s 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.\n\nIn 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.\n\nIn March 2025, Sen. Ossoff cosponsored the bipartisan Children and Teens\u2019 Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) to limit use of children\u2019s information for individually targeted advertising.\n\nIn 2024, Sen. Ossoff\u2019s bipartisan REPORT Act with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) became law, which \u2014 for the first time \u2014 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\u2019s enactment, NCMEC has seen a 952% increase in reports of child sex trafficking and a 77% increase in reports of online enticement of children.\n\nIn 2023, Sens. Ossoff and Grassley\u2019s 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.\n\nPlease find Sen. Ossoff\u2019s inquiries here with Apple and Google.\n\n# # #", 1, "2026-08-01T07:27:26Z", "2026-08-01T07:28:22Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/press-releases/sen-ossoff-launches-inquiry-into-app-store-age-ratings-to-help-protect-children-online/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.2332717888057232, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}