AgeBridge guide
Google Play age signals and Families policy: a developer's map
Target-audience declarations, Families policy requirements, and how Play's age signals reach your app — normalized for feature gating.
The declaration layer
Play requires a target-audience declaration for every app; if children are in the audience, Families policy applies — content, ads, and data-practice requirements, with re-review when your declarations change. Misdeclaring the audience is itself a violation, independent of app behavior.
The signal layer
Play surfaces age-related signals to apps (and is expanding them as US state laws phase in) so developers can adjust experiences for minors. The practical problem is fragmentation: the shape and availability of signals differ by platform, jurisdiction, and account state.
Normalize before you gate
Convert whatever the platform gives you into a small vocabulary — age range (UNDER_13 / 13_15 / 16_17 / 18_PLUS / UNKNOWN), supervision state, consent state — and write feature gates once against that vocabulary. Treat UNKNOWN as its own state with an explicit policy, never as 'adult by default'.
Authoritative sources
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Requirements change; the linked sources are authoritative.