Parental Controls

Use parental controls and age ratings to limit of the types of game that your family play and how long they play for.

In addition to clear age rating symbols and descriptor icons, all of today’s consoles and handheld gaming devices offer parental controls to help families keep track of the games they are playing and how long they play for. Setting these up not only offers parents a greater degree of control but provides families an opportunity to agree how they will play games. This can then be implemented on each system automatically.

For instance, you may wish to set a certain amount of time that can be played each day. Doing this will automatically stop a game once the time has elapsed. In a family setting this can be a good way to avoid arguments about when to stop playing.

Setting up these parental controls differs for each system and is often updated after a particular console has been released. It is therefore important that you update your hardware with the latest updates, by connecting to the internet via your home wireless or wired connection.

The following links offer guidance to set-up family settings on different systems: