Android Parental Control – How to Turn on Android Parental Control

All parents do want an Android Parental Control for their kids. For all their many joys, mobile devices can expose your kids to content you’d rather they didn’t see.

The good news is that your Android smartphone or tablet comes with built-in tools. And this can help you ensure your little ones can access only age-appropriate content.

Android Parental Control

As discovered, those tools are effective and straightforward to use. Here is more information about the Android Parental Control.

Android Parental Control

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how parental controls work on a standard Android smartphone. Note that some other Android-powered devices may have their own, manufacturer-specific parental controls.

For example, the Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon has Amazon’s own versions of parental control software and an Amazon-exclusive parent dashboard.

Plus, devices such as the Kurio Tab Connect have kid-friendly software overlaid on the main Android operating system.

Here, we’ll look at two apps: the Google Play Store app, and the Google Family Link app. Although Family Link is primarily an Android app.

How to Turn on Android Parental Control

You can also install it on iOS to create and manage user accounts. If your child is under 13, both the Android and Apple versions enable you to create Google accounts for them.

Open the Play app

Android Parental Control lives inside the Google Play Store app. So, you’ll need to open that on the device on which you want parental controls to run.

Depending on the specific version of Android you have, you’ll either see the three-line ‘hamburger’ menu icon in the search bar at the top. Or you’ll have a tappable profile picture as shown here. Tap on it and then on Settings.

Find the Family

You should now see several options in the Settings page. The one we want is Family. Tap on the arrow at the right of the screen.

Expand the options

When you tap on the arrow it will expand the section, enabling you to see the available options and the current status of the parental controls.

If someone hasn’t already set up parental controls for this device, it should say that parental controls are off. Tap on that option to continue.

Push the button

Before you can adjust the parental control settings, you need to turn parental controls on. You can do that by tapping the button at the top of this page.

As you’d expect, you hit the same button if, for whatever reason, you want to turn parental controls off again.

Pick a PIN

Of course, there’s no point in having a parental control system if the kids can simply swagger into Settings and turn it off.

To prevent this, Android will now ask you to create a PIN. Don’t forget it: you won’t be able to turn off the Android Parental Control without it.

Select the content

You should now be returned to the Settings > Parental Controls page, this time with the message “Parental controls are on” at the top.

You can now tap on the kind of content for which you want to add restrictions.

Set the age limit

As you can see, the limit system couldn’t be simpler: just pick the age rating you want to enforce and Android will do the rest.

These ratings are PEGI ratings, which is short for Pan European Game Information. If you restrict games and apps to a particular age, it will also exclude apps that don’t have an age rating.

Install Family Link

If you want more complex parental controls, you need the Family Link app from the Google Play Store or iOS App Store.

This enables you to create a family group by inviting family members via their Google Accounts. And once you’ve set it up, you can set limits on a per-account basis, not just one device.

Family Link Features

Family Link enables you to set time limits and bedtimes, block or allow specific apps, locate devices, and hide specific apps altogether.

It will also notify you if your family members try to download apps from the Play Store. Allowing you to approve or deny the request.

Family Link can limit apps’ access to hardware features such as the microphone or camera, too. It can set the filtering preferences for the YouTube Kids app, and manage SafeSearch settings for Google web searches.

You can do some of these things via the Family Link website https://families.google.com. But features such as screen-time limits are app-only.

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