The App Store now labels social media in games, and chat does not count

There is a new line in the age-rating box on App Store listings, and it is the first one Apple has added that is about other people rather than about content. It reads Social Media, and a game that carries it cannot be rated below 13+.

Since this month, answering the question is not optional. Apple told developers in June that from September 2026 they would have to state whether an app or game has social media capabilities in order to submit anything at all — a new app, an update, or a build for notarisation on an alternative app marketplace in the EU.

What Apple means by social media

The definition is narrower than the phrase suggests, and the whole article turns on it. A social media capability, in Apple's wording, is the ability to redistribute, amplify or interact with user-generated content "through a social feed or similar discovery method" that visibly spreads content to many users. Feeds with views, likes, comments and shares are the example Apple gives.

Read that against what most mobile games actually have. A clan chat, a squad voice channel, a direct message to somebody on your friends list — none of those spreads anything to many users, and none of them is a feed. They are covered by a different line, and that line does nothing to the rating.

So a game can let strangers talk to you all day and still sit at 4+ as far as this questionnaire is concerned. It is a feed that moves the number.

What the sixteen games we cover declare today

These columns were read from the App Store product pages on 18 September 2026. They record what each developer has declared, which is not the same as what each game contains — a point worth holding on to before reading anything into a blank cell.

Thirteen of the sixteen declare a way to talk to other players. Three declare a feed. Ten of them, in other words, let you communicate with strangers and are not social media by the definition Apple has just made mandatory — including Clash Royale, which carries the chat line and sits at 9+.

Why Apple wanted the answer

The declaration is not really about ratings. It feeds Time Allowances, the parental control Apple shipped on 14 September 2026 with iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27, which lets a parent set separate daily limits for Entertainment, Games and Social Media.

The load-bearing detail is which bucket a game lands in. Apple assigns the Social Media category from the capability declaration and not from the category a developer picked in App Store Connect — so a game that declares a feed is counted against a child's social media time, not their games time, whatever it calls itself in the store. That is the part a parent setting these limits this month will notice first.

What the label does not tell you

• It is the developer's own answer. Apple sets the definition and the questionnaire; the developer fills it in. Nothing on the listing is an independent finding, and nothing here tests whether any of these declarations is right.
• A blank is not proof of absence. A missing line means the developer did not declare the capability. That is all it means, and it is the same caution the loot-box line in the same box deserves.
• 13+ is a floor, not an explanation. The rest of the questionnaire can push a rating higher, so a 13+ game is not 13+ because of a feed. Call of Duty: Mobile is 18+ and declares no feed at all.
• It says nothing about moderation. The line records that a feed exists. How it is filtered, who sees what, and what happens to a report are not questions this questionnaire asks.

Reading it yourself, in four taps

1. 1

   Open the game's App Store page

   From search, or from a link. The App Store app and the web listing show the same box.

2. 2

   Scroll to Information

   Below the screenshots and the description, past the ratings and reviews.

3. 3

   Open the Age Rating row

   The row shows the rating — 4+, 9+, 13+, 16+ or 18+ — and expands to the descriptors behind it.

4. 4

   Read the group headed Contains

   Apple groups the descriptors as In-App Controls, Frequent, Infrequent and Contains. Social Media, Messaging and Chat and User-Generated Content appear under Contains.

It takes about ten seconds, and it answers a question that is otherwise guesswork: not whether a game is violent, but whether the thing your child is installing has a room full of strangers in it, and whether that room broadcasts.