App Store Connect adds a social-media flag to the age rating questionnaire

Apple has updated the App Store Connect age rating questionnaire to ask directly whether an app or game includes social media capabilities — specifically, the ability to redistribute, amplify, or interact with user-generated content through a feed or similar discovery mechanism. Based on the answer, the app is automatically sorted into a Time Allowance category: Social Media, Entertainment, Games, or Other, regardless of whatever category you originally selected in App Store Connect for store placement purposes.

This isn't optional starting in September: from that point, answering the social-media question becomes a requirement to submit new versions or updates to the App Store, and it also applies to notarization for apps distributed through alternative marketplaces outside the App Store itself. An app that has any feed-like or content-discovery feature and doesn't declare it correctly risks a review holdup once the requirement is enforced, not just an inaccurate rating.

For most utility and developer-tool apps, this genuinely doesn't apply — no feed, no user-generated content surfacing, no change needed. It matters specifically if your app has any kind of activity feed, comments-with-discovery, or content recommendation surface, even as a secondary feature bolted onto a primarily non-social app. Worth checking now, before September, rather than discovering the classification during a routine update submission when the deadline has already passed and a resubmission delay actually costs you release time.