Android Market Content Rating System For Age-Appropriate Content to be Introduced

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Android is booming in popularity, and is the fastest-growing platform today, along with its marketplace for Apps. With this kind of growth, though, you would expect a lot of applications to have content that might not exactly be appropriate for all age levels. Google is thus introducing a rating system to restrict underage use.

When submitting applications to Market, developers are asked to provide a rating in order to help users determine whether the app or the content is age-appropriate. Developers can choose among the All, Pre-Teen, Teen and Mature ratings.

Also, there are a few recommendations on how to rate apps or content depending on whether these contain alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling, hate, profanity, sexuality, crude humor, violence, and the like. Further, apps that require location-sharing will also be limited to certain ratings, as we definitely wouldn’t want our kids to share where they are.

Developers are responsible for rating themselves, though, and there is no third party to approve or impose these ratings, other than by self-policing.