Great businesses are made this way with top customer needs

“I didn’t need a law.” This is restaurateur extraordinaire Danny Meyer (Gramercy Park, Union Square Café, Shake Shack, Blue Smoke, etc.) from his memoir, Table setup. Meyer was referring to smoking in restaurants.

While then-mayor Michael Bloomberg voted to ban smoking in restaurants across the city in 2002, Meyer did the same in 1990. It was about customers. Eager to get back to work, he decided that cigarette smoke was drifting to the detriment of non-smokers.

Meyer’s 35-year-old decision is something for Rep. John James and Sen. Mike Lee to think about as they seek to pass the App Store Accountability Act. The latter would, among other things, require operators of app stores with at least five million users to verify a user’s age during the app registration process. The stated goal of the legislation is to protect young people from accessing what they shouldn’t online, but for one problem: it’s not necessary.

That the legislation is unnecessary can be found in the happy truth that Danny Meyer was years ahead of politicians on the issue of smoking in restaurants. The big ones don’t require the laws to do well from their customers, precisely because the big ones always happen with improvements and protection of the same customers long before the politicians.

Taking James and Lee’s legislation into today’s reality, existing software on Apple phones, tablets and watches enables parents to limit screen time, control the nature of screen time, while also controlling what children can and cannot see. Not only can they not add apps without their parents’ permission, but all incoming and outgoing images are blurred to the point of nudity.

What applies to Apple’s products also applies to Google’s. With SafeSearch and FamilyLink, parents control the apps and websites they visit, the time on devices, with pin protection for any changes. That’s what big companies do.

Even better, it’s worth adding that big companies never rest on their laurels. In business, attitude is the road to obsolescence, which means that Apple and Google in protecting the online experience of young people are not done.

Consider pin-protected access to tech devices. It is not possible to say that if children can find parental passwords, they can easily overcome the approval barriers. Except that Apple’s latest technology lets parents know if their pins are being used on devices that aren’t theirs. Problem solved.

To which some will reasonably respond that while freely accessible innovations are great, not all parents are equal when it comes to understanding and implementing these innovations. The good news there is that even if parents are busy or just confused as they set up their kids’ devices, most of the security measures mentioned so far are automatic. In other words, the third screen that appears for Apple users on new devices asks for the user’s “age range” (this keeps exact dates of birth private), thereby instantly automating protections for young people.

Which is just as crucial. While it’s popular to say that smartphones and other technological devices are creating a so-called “anxious generation,” the happier truth is that the ubiquity of these devices means parents are a little less anxious. Not only do they provide the aforementioned protections, but it’s so easy to forget that these devices provide parents with the peace of mind that comes with location-based alerts, including alerts for parents when their kids both arrive at school and return home. Protection and peace of mind, with more advancements on the way.

Contrast all this with the legislation of James and Lee. Talk about a glimpse into the past. How lucky for their customers that big businesses are always looking ahead.