Does your child play games or watch movies on PlayStation 4? The console’s Family Management dashboard lets you set age restrictions, screen time limits and spending limits, all from one place. If you’ve never gone looking for these settings before, here’s a parent’s guide to setting up PlayStation 4 parental controls, step by step.
PlayStation 4’s Family Management dashboard gives parents good, practical parental controls, allowing you to:
- set spending limits in the PlayStation Store
- set age restrictions for games and movies
- set and monitor game time
When you set up a family on your PS4, you can add children and other players to it. You can customise parental controls for each child individually, giving you a safer, more age-appropriate experience for younger players. Family members fall into a few roles:
Family Manager – When you create a family, you become the family manager. As family manager, you can add and manage family members and set parental controls. You must be an adult to create a family.
Parent/Guardian – As a parent or guardian, you can set parental controls. The family manager can appoint another adult family member as a parent or guardian.
Family Members – Any user added to a family is a family member.
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How to Set Up Your Family on PlayStation 4
To set up your family, go to Settings on your PS4, then follow the on-screen instructions to enter your sign-in information.
Select “verify your PSN email,” then choose a user you’d like to add to your family. You’ll be asked to enter their name and birthdate, then confirm.
If your child doesn’t have a user ID yet, you can create one during this process. A user can only be part of one family at a time, and children are automatically added to the family of the adult who creates their user account. Children cannot be removed from the family they’re added to, so make sure the adult creating a child’s account intends to be the family manager.
Next, set the age level for games. For example:
- Level 1 is up to age 3
- Level 8 can only play up to Teen-rated games
- Level 9 can only play up to Mature-rated games
- Level 10 and up can play all ESRB-rated games, including Mature and Adults Only titles
- Level 11 is age 17 or older
You can then set the age level for Blu-rays and DVDs — the lower the level, the tighter the restrictions.
Finally, decide whether your child can use PlayStation VR (Allowed/Not Allowed) and whether they can use the Internet Browser (Allowed/Not Allowed).
Joining the PlayStation Network for Online Gaming
Next, decide whether your child can join the PlayStation Network to play online. If they’re going to access PSN, you’ll need to choose whether:
- they can communicate with other players, including voice chat and text messaging (Allowed/Not Allowed)
- they can view content created by other players, including videos, images and text (Allowed/Not Allowed)
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Setting Limits for Spending and Content
Once online access is sorted, set limits for spending and content:
- Set a monthly spending limit – this caps how much can be spent on games, loot boxes and add-ons.
- Set age filtering for online content – this stops your child accessing content outside their set age level.
Time Settings on PlayStation 4
Next, go into the time zone settings to set a time zone for your family. Select the time zone and confirm.
You can then set play time restrictions for each family member:
- Decide whether you want to restrict time or not (Restrict/Do Not Restrict).
- Choose what happens when time runs out. The PS4 can either notify the user their play time has run out with an on-screen message every five minutes, or log them out automatically — with a warning first, so they can save their game.
- Decide how much time your child can play. For example, you might allow an hour of game time on weekdays and something different at weekends. It’s entirely up to you and what suits your family.
Each time you log in, you’ll see your Family Management dashboard, with your PSN ID at the top. From here you can check how long your child has played on any given day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to be the account holder to set up parental controls?
Yes. Only the family manager — the adult who creates the family on the PS4 — can set and change parental controls for other family members.
Can I change the age restriction level later?
Yes, the family manager can go back into Family Management settings at any time and adjust age levels, spending limits or time restrictions as your child gets older.
What happens when my child’s play time runs out?
Depending on how you’ve set things up, the PS4 will either send an on-screen warning every five minutes or log the child out automatically, with enough notice for them to save their progress first.
Can I set different rules for different children?
Yes. Parental controls are set individually for each family member, so siblings of different ages can have different age levels, spending limits and time restrictions.
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Before You Go
Setting up PlayStation 4 parental controls only takes a few minutes, but it gives you real peace of mind around what your child is playing, watching and spending. If you found this useful, take a look through our other family tech guides for more ways to keep screen time balanced and age-appropriate.
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