- Let's talk about parental controls.
Now this is a topic that comes up
pretty often in our comments,
so I thought it would be good to address it.
We're gonna talk about how to set them up,
why to set them up on several different apps.
Now, the why of parental controls
is pretty obvious if you are a parent.
If you're not, it's tempting to just skip right past them,
and sometimes that's okay,
but there are times when you'll still
want to go in and take a look at them.
For instance, Prime Video has in-app purchases,
so you may want to lock those with a pin
if you don't want somebody else, a roommate for instance,
getting in and making those purchases on your profile.
So we're gonna talk about how to set up parental controls
on several different services.
Some of the big ones, especially,
so Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, and Prime Video.
I'm even gonna throw Tubi in there.
That's a free service, and it has
a little bit of a wrinkle in there
that other free services are going to run into as well,
so I thought it would be good to have that example.
Now, if you're using an app
that I'm not going over today, that's all right.
It's really about the principle of it.
Once you get the hang of it
and where these things are located,
you can go find it on any streaming service.
Well, any streaming service that offers parental controls,
but that should be most of the premium ones.
So let's get started.
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All right, let's dive in.
Let's start out with the big one first: Netflix.
How do you do parental controls on Netflix?
Well, in this case, you have to go online.
If you're going into the app on a streaming device,
or on your phone or something,
it'll direct you to the browser
to edit your parental settings and other settings.
So once we get here onto the front page,
I've logged in, and now I can go
right down here to Manage Profiles,
and I'm gonna be able to edit these.
Obviously you can see I can add a profile right there.
Actually, let's do that first.
Let's add a profile.
Now we're gonna do a test profile here,
and let's say, yeah, this is a kid's profile.
Let's see what happens.
I'm gonna continue on here.
Okay, well, I'm gonna have to now manage that.
That's already set up as a kid's one,
but if I come in here and edit this,
I'll be able to edit the maturity settings in the browser.
So okay, I gotta put in my password first,
and then once I'm in here, you'll see that it displays
as a kid's profile automatically.
Now, if I adjust downward, that stays there.
So I can go for, you know very young children
up to TV PG or PG for movies.
If I go above that,
you'll notice that this checkbox goes away.
That is no longer a kid's profile.
So if I wanna check that box, that is the highest rating
that I can allow on that Netflix profile.
Now, one thing that is really nice on this
is this box right here,
title restrictions for for test.
I mean, okay, for this profile,
the test profile I've got here.
And the reason I like this lot is,
and you know, maybe this is a little bit sneaky,
but you know, your kid is, well, hey,
I've got a seven year old and a four year old.
I know how this goes.
They get obsessed, right?
And pretty soon you don't wanna
hear the theme song or watch the show anymore.
You know, whatever the show might be,
Tayo the Little Bus or, you know,
whatever these shows are that kids are watching,
if it's driving you absolutely crazy,
you can go ahead and restrict that specifically.
So let's see what, okay, yeah, Tayo the Little Bus.
Yeah, I hate that thing.
Okay, so I'm gonna save that,
and now that will no longer show up on that profile.
And I can do this with any of these, right?
So I could go into an adult's profile
and set the maturity ratings on that.
It's automatically, on an adult profile,
it's gonna be automatically all the way to the right,
but if for whatever reason
you don't want that content to be accessible,
you can go ahead and pull that down
to whatever level your household is comfortable with.
Next up is HBO Max.
So again, we're going to the front page
of HBO Max on the website.
Now with HBO Max, you're gonna get the same functionality
whether you're in the app or you're online.
Either way, you get to this front page, you manage profiles,
and then you can go into whichever one.
So if I go to this kid's profile, kiddos, okay,
so I need to enter my pin before I can do that.
Let's hope I remember my pin, and it looks like I do.
Okay, so once I'm in here, now I can,
for this kid's profile,
adjust movies and TV separately, which is kinda nice.
And I can also toggle this button right down here,
require the pin to switch profiles.
This is really nice if you have kids,
or you got teenagers that you don't want
accessing the adult profiles on something like HBO Max,
'cause yeah, there's some very adult stuff on HBO.
And you go ahead and toggle that on
so that if you're in a kid's profile, on whatever device,
to get out of it you'll need to use that pin that you set.
Now on HBO Max with the adult profiles,
you do not get that option
to change the content level like you do on Netflix.
Even on the adult profiles on Netflix
you can shift what you allow, not so on HBO Max.
HBO Max only lets you do that on kid's profiles.
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Now, Hulu is an interesting one.
You can do this either in app or online.
I'm gonna stick here in the browser for now
to show you how to do it,
but it's gonna be basically the same thing
if you're using the app
on your Roku, or Fire TV, or whatever.
But I'm gonna come right up here to my profiles.
Now you can see, I can switch profiles here,
but I'm gonna come right down here to Manage Profiles.
When I click on Manage Profiles, that takes me right here.
You can go to the overview of your account,
but it does not give you any additional
parental control functions there.
But here in the profiles,
I can click on these and edit them.
You would think this is where you would want to go
if you want parental controls.
Well, eh, kind of, not really.
You can, on a kid's profile, toggle this switch,
turn on to watch only kid friendly programming.
Okay, well that makes sense.
This is a kid's profile.
So we turn that on.
If I turn it off, it'll wanna know
when I was born, what my gender is,
presumably so they can target different shows at me.
But anyway, I wanna keep this as a kid's profile,
and frankly, that is pretty much the only option you've got.
They don't have that same kind of slider,
that sliding scale that allows you
to choose what rating you wanna go with.
So that is not there.
So yeah, Hulu keeps it really simple.
I kinda wish they had more functionality,
but what they do have, yeah, you can access right there,
again, either online or in the app.
All right, Prime Video is another one.
This one is tough because, again,
you wanna go online to change a lot of these settings.
It's not really available in the app,
but the only problem is Amazon
is such a huge site that it's tough to find.
So if you wanna know how I got to this page,
Parental Controls, I'm gonna come right up here
to this little hamburger where it says All,
and then come down here to Digital Content & Devices,
Prime Video, and yeah, so that's how I get here.
Once I'm in Prime Video,
I can go right over here to these settings,
and that's where I can find the Parental Controls tab.
Now Prime Video has one of the more
robust versions of parental controls out there,
but it does have one little quirk
that I'll get to in just a second.
First of all, you set up your Prime Video pin.
I would highly recommend you do this.
Now, whether or not you're setting up parental controls,
this pin, it says, "is used authorized Prime Video purchases
"and to bypass Parental Controls."
But I would turn this on even if I lived alone
because you know, you sit on the remote,
or you misclick, or whatever,
and you accidentally buy or rent a show,
well, this will keep you from doing that.
So I would set that pin up
and turn on purchase restrictions,
but again, that's up to you.
When you come down here to the viewing restrictions,
here's the weird thing about Prime Video.
So you can set your approximate age
for what you want the viewing restrictions to be,
but then instead of doing that per profile,
this is going to be a setting that is done by device.
So if you've got kids who are using, you know,
say an iPad, or a phone, or whatever,
and that's the dedicated device that they use
to stream on Amazon Prime, then you can go down here.
Okay, so I want to uncheck all supported devices.
Let's say they only use
the old Xfinity box that I don't have anymore.
Okay, so we'll restrict that one just by itself,
and I only want them to, you know, get stuff up to 13 or so,
and it'll say "Viewing restrictions updated."
You don't have to press save or anything.
It does it automatically, but yeah, it does it by device.
So some people will find that convenient.
Others will find it probably a little maddening.
All right, hopping on over to Disney+.
I'm on the front page.
Before I go into any of the profiles specifically,
I'm gonna come up here to Edit Profiles
and select a profile to edit.
Okay, so let's go to these, the kid's profile here.
Now kids automatically cannot use GroupWatch.
You'll notice that one is grayed out,
and it also turns off autoplay,
but it does keep on background video.
Now down here at the Parental Controls,
here is where you can manipulate just a little bit.
This one is grayed out.
A kid's profile does not let you
adjust content on that sliding scale.
It just cuts it off.
But one thing you can do
is go right up here to Kid Proof Exit,
make it harder to leave a kid's profile
with a simple exit question.
So if you have really young children,
you can turn this on to keep them from gonna your profile.
This one, I, you know, as a parent,
I'm a little bit less concerned about it
because it's still Disney+.
They don't do a lot of adult oriented content,
but you know, there may be things
that you don't want your littlest kids to see,
so you can turn on the Kid Proof Exit,
and then you can also set up a profile pin.
I would not do this for a kid's profile,
but we may wanna do that with the adult one.
So if I go to Done on this and go to edit my own profile,
that's where we can go to the content rating.
Oh, I gotta enter my password.
And once I'm in here, I can, yeah, I see it.
It stops at TV 14, that's as far as they go.
So I can set what my profile is allowed to watch,
and then come back down here, and the profile pin,
if I really want to keep the kids out of my profile,
I can set up my own profile pin, you know, four a digit pin.
And when you enable that, you've got to put that in
in order to get into that particular profile.
So that should pretty much do it
on the premium streaming services
like Netflix, and HBO Max, and Hulu.
That should take care of you.
If you have another one that you're paying for,
something like Peacock or what have you,
then you're gonna follow a very similar, a similar process.
But what about the free ones?
I'm gonna just use Tubi as an example here.
So if I click into Tubi, I've signed in,
I'm gonna come right over here to my name
and go to Parental Controls.
Now, the thing about this is you're not able
to set up different profiles on the same account,
and so when you do these parental controls,
this is a blanket parental control.
Okay, so little kids, older kids, teens, whatever,
you're only going to be able to set this once,
and then Tubi will recognize that
across devices on this account.
So if I wanna change that,
I just have to put my password in and save it.
Now, how do you get around that?
Well, it's actually pretty simple.
If I go up here to sign out, I simply,
well, okay, once I get back in,
let's just go ahead and put in some random info here,
and then once I'm in here,
I can go ahead and just register a new account.
So you register an account with a different email address,
and then it's effectively the same thing
as having different profiles.
And once you get in, you'll be able to, you know,
adjust that parental control for that particular profile.
And then if your kids, again,
they're watching on an iPad or what have you,
you'll be able to go in and just log in
on the parentally controlled profile.
All right, hopefully that was helpful.
Hopefully that gave you the answers you were looking for.
Like I said, if I didn't go over the app
that you are going to be using,
then just use this as a template.
You should be able to find the settings,
the parental controls on the website
or in the app that you are looking to use.
Anyway, good luck out there.
Let me know if you have any other questions
or if there are any other
parental control issues that I missed today.
Hit the comments, don't forget to like and subscribe.
Thanks for watching today, everybody.
I will see you next time.