Thinking through the auth model of the API, my guess is it is quite a technical challenge to go from a Parent/Child model that leverages pre-existing iCloud trust pairs, to a unary model. The Auth token can theoretically come from anywhere, but Apple would need to support a mechanism for self-dealing the auth token, managing it, revoking it (and guarding against revoke), etc. This would take a strong internal advocate to make happen.
My hope is Apple realizes that there is a very, very large use case for improved self-regulation on the phone. My company, Freedom, has millions of users, and multiple iOS engineers ready to take on a project with Screen Time API, so if Apple needs help thinking through this space we are happy to collaborate and share knowledge. As an engineer, however, I realize the challenge that Apple has to lift this API to the self-regulation case.
Perhaps other individuals/companies who are interested in using the Screen Time API for self-regulation could leave comments or +1's here, just in case Apple happens to read this. There is a very, very large number of individuals to serve with better self-regulation tools, and we'd love to be able to take advantage of the API.
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I agree. While I understand there are architectural challenges, my hope is Apple will support the self-managed use case.