Josh Hendrickson
Until recently, Netflix parental controls were terrible. You can set up kid’s profiles, but those are “soft controls,” and show-ratings determine what the profile can see. But just because a show is rated-G doesn’t mean it’s kid-friendly. And nothing stopped your children from switching to an adult profile. Well, now, Netflix’s new parental controls solve both those problems.
Most parents like to have some control over what their children see, and I’m no exception. I keep an eye on my seven-year-old, but I’m not perfect so having controls to help me parent is a good thing. But Netflix’s kid profile rating system isn’t helpful. You can choose “older kids and below” or “little kids only.” And you can only set that up from a desktop browser.
Which of those two choices should I pick for a seven-year-old? Well, I can tell you it’s not “little kids only” cause that’s all pre-school stuff that bores him now. But “older kids” doesn’t seem right either. It’s not that I wouldn’t let him watch Jeopardy (as seen above) so much as that’s not a good show for seven-year-olds and what will entertain or educate them. (They’ll be too bored for education.) When Calls the Heart, and Star Trek: Voyager are probably not the best for his list either, but they’re there.
Worse yet, even after I set up ratings, nothing stops him from just switching to my profile. At least until today. Now, as spotted by The Verge, Netflix is adding two options to parental controls to fix the problem completely. First, you can restrict movies and shows by names. Once you enter them, they won’t show up on your kid’s profile anymore. Ratings are much more expanded now as well. You can select options like TV-Y, PG, PG-13, and so on.
And secondly, and this is something we asked for previously, you can put a pin on your adult profiles. Without it, your child can’t access your profile and stumble across Stranger Things or Sex Education. And you can access the parental controls from both mobile and desktop. Those are excellent new features that were desperately needed.
According to The Verge, the new parental controls should be out now, though we’re not seeing them yet on our profiles. Hopefully, they’ll roll out to everyone soon.
Updated: Shortly after posting this article, the new parental control hit our account. You can get to them on the desktop from Netflix account settings.
via The Verge
