Does your child play games or watch movies on PlayStation 4? Did you know there’s a new Family Management feature on the PlayStation 4 which allows you to set age restrictions, time restrictions and spending limits? Here’s a Parent’s Guide to Setting Up PlayStation 4 New Parental Controls:

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PlayStation 4 just released a firmware update (5.50) that introduces a new Family Management dashboard and features with good parental controls allowing parents 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, you can add children and other players to your family. You can customize parental controls for each child, and provide a safer experience for children on your PS4™ system. Family members can include the following.

Family Manager – When you create a family, you are the family manager. As the 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 Select (Settings) > [Parental Controls/Family Management] > [Family Management], and then follow the on-screen instructions to enter your sign-in information.

Select [Set Up Now] verify your PSN email then select a user you’d like to add to your family. You’ll be asked to enter their name and birthdate and confirm.

If your child doesn’t have a user ID yet, you can create one here. A user can be in only one family at a time and children are automatically added to the family of the adult who creates their user accounts. Children cannot be removed from the family they are added to, so be sure that the adult who creates a child’s user account intends to be the family manager.

Then set the age level for games e.g.

• 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.

Then you can set the age level for Blu-rays and DVDs, the lower the level, the tighter the control and the more restrictions there are.

You can then decide whether they can use PlayStation VR or not (Allowed/Not Allowed) and decide if they can use the Internet Browser (Allowed/Not Allowed).

Joining the PlayStation Network for Online Gaming

Next you should decide if your child can join the PlayStation Network to play online games. If they are going to access the PSN, you have to decide if

• they can communicate with other players, including voice chat, text messaging (Allowed/Not Allowed)
• they are able to view content created by other players including videos, images, text (Allowed/Not Allowed)

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Setting Limits for Spending and Content

You’ll then want to set limits for content and spending:

• Set a Monthly spending limit. This will cap the spend on buying games, loot boxes and game add-ons.
• Set age filtering for online content. This will mean your child can’t access game content outside of the set age level.

Time Settings on PlayStation 4

You’ll then 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 your family members.

• Decide if you want to restrict time or not (Restrict/Do Not Restrict)
• Choose what happens when time runs out. Either the PS4 can notify the user that their play time has run out by sending them an on-screen message every five minutes or the PS4 can log them out of the system when time is up – don’t worry they will be warned so they can save their games.
• You can decide how much time they can play for, e.g. you could set it so they get an hour of game time, and you can set different times for different days. Whatever suits you and your child.

Each time you log in you’ll be able to access your Family Management dashboard screen with your PSN ID at the top.

You can check any time on how long your child has played for that day through the Family Manager dashboard.

Over to you now. Have you set up the PlayStation 4 new parental controls? Tell us your experience in the comments below.