Every device and platform your child uses has the same six controls, under different names and in different menus. Set the six once per device, in this order, and you have done most of what parental controls can do:
- Ownership. The child's account sits under yours, so you can see and change it.
- Purchases. Nothing can be bought without your approval.
- Communication. Who can message, voice chat or friend-request the child.
- Content. What rating or maturity level the account can open.
- Time. When the device works and for how long.
- Privacy. What the account shares, and with whom.
Below is where each control lives on the platforms families ask about most. Menu names move with software updates, so each section links to the platform's own support site rather than quoting a menu path that may be a year old by the time you read it.
Before you start: one adult account, one child account
Every platform's controls assume the child has their own account and that it is linked to a parent's. If your child plays on your account, or on an account created with a fake birth year, none of the controls apply to them.
Fixing this is tedious and worth doing first. A correctly aged child account gets the platform's own restrictions by default. A child playing on a parent's account gets an adult's.
iPhone and iPad
Apple's controls are called Screen Time, and the child account is set up through Family Sharing. Once linked, you manage the child's device from your own phone.
Screen Time covers all six controls: purchase approval through Ask to Buy, communication limits by contact, content ratings for apps and media, app time limits and downtime, and privacy settings the child cannot change. Apple's support site has the current walkthrough under Family Sharing and Screen Time.
Two settings people miss:
- Ask to Buy covers free apps as well as paid ones if you enable it for both. Free apps are where most in-app spending happens.
- Communication Limits apply to Apple's own apps. A game with its own chat is governed by the game's settings, not by Screen Time.
Android and Chromebook
Google's equivalent is Family Link. It creates a child Google account under yours and manages the child's phone, tablet or Chromebook from your device.
Family Link handles purchase approval on the Play Store, app installation approval, content ratings, daily limits and bedtime, and location. Google's Family Link site is the current reference.
The same caveat applies as on Apple: Family Link controls the device and the store, not the inside of a game.
Nintendo Switch
Nintendo's controls live in a separate phone app, Nintendo Switch Parental Controls, which pairs with the console. It sets a daily play time limit, a bedtime, a restriction level by age rating, and whether the child can communicate with others in games that support it.
Purchases are controlled separately through the Nintendo Account, where a child account can be blocked from spending, and where you should remove any stored payment method. Nintendo's parental controls page covers both.
Most Nintendo games have no free text or voice chat, which makes the Switch the easiest of the consoles to set up for a young child. Online play with strangers still exists in many games and can be turned off at the console level.
PlayStation
Sony's controls are managed through Family Management on the parent's account. A child account can be limited by age rating, given a monthly spending limit, restricted from communicating with other players, and given play time limits by day.
Communication settings on PlayStation matter more than on Switch because party voice chat is a console feature that works across games. Restricting it at the account level is the only way to close it everywhere at once. PlayStation Support has the current steps under family management and parental controls.
Xbox
Microsoft's controls are in the Xbox Family Settings app and on the family safety site. They cover content ratings, spending approval, screen time, and communication, including who the child can chat with and whether they can join multiplayer with people outside the family.
As with PlayStation, party chat is a console-level feature. Set communication to friends only, and set who can add friends to the parent. Xbox Support has the current guide under family settings.
Roblox
Roblox is a platform rather than a device, and its defaults are the least restrictive on this list. A parent links their account to the child's and can then cap the age rating of experiences, turn chat and messages off or restrict them to friends, close friend requests, set a monthly spending limit and set a daily time limit.
Do all of them. The Roblox safety guide walks through each setting and what it does and does not cover, and Roblox's help center has the current locations.
Minecraft
Minecraft's controls depend on which edition and which account the child uses. With a child Microsoft account under a family group, a parent can restrict multiplayer, chat, and joining clubs or realms, and can approve purchases from the marketplace.
The safe configuration for a young child is single-player or a private realm with people you know, with public servers off. Minecraft's help site has the current settings by platform.
Which controls matter most, if you only do some
If a full setup is not going to happen tonight, do these in this order:
- Purchases, because an unapproved charge is the failure that cannot be undone.
- Communication, because contact from strangers is the failure that matters most.
- Ownership, because without it the other settings do not apply to the child.
Content ratings and time limits are useful and can wait a week. The first three cannot.
What the six controls cannot do
The FTC's guidance on children's privacy sets what platforms must do about a child's data. Nothing requires a platform to make its defaults good for a nine year old, which is why this guide exists.
The controls also do not know your child. They cannot tell whether a game is worth the time, whether the child is enjoying it or stuck in it, or whether the classmate who sent a friend request is that classmate. The American Academy of Pediatrics puts this well: the question is what the child is doing and what it replaces, not which switch is on.
Configured well, the six controls remove the failures that are not worth risking. They leave the judgment to you, which is where it belongs.
One more thing worth saying. The reason this takes seven sections and seven support sites is that each platform treats parental control as a feature bolted on after the fact. At Motions we are building the other way round: the parent account comes first, and the child's world is whatever the parent has switched on. If you would rather have the six controls in one place, you can request access for your family.
For what a control system should do in principle, before you open any menu, see what good parental controls should actually do.