How-To

Restrict Mature Netflix Content from Kids with Parental Controls

If you have children, you don’t want them watching unsuitable content on Netflix. Here’s how to use parental controls and restrict programs with a PIN.

One of the benefits of Netflix is the ability to create multiple user profiles. However, you might not want all eyes to see everything that’s available from the streaming giant’s library. That’s where parental controls and creating a PIN is important. It helps protect your kids from viewing questionable content by requiring a PIN to be entered before viewing anything above a select rating.

Use Netflix Parental Controls

From your browser, launch Netflix and click your profile in the upper-right corner. Then select “Account” from the drop-down menu.

On the next page scroll down and choose “Parental Controls” in the Settings section.

2 Netflix Parental Controls Link

For security’s sake, you will need to enter your account password to get to the options in the parental controls section.

3 Netflix Account Password

Next, you’ll be at the Parental Controls screen where you need to enter in a PIN — of course, make sure your kids don’t know it. Here you choose the type of programming that can be played. The content is based on the standard rating system we’re all used to, i.e. PG, PG-13 for movies or TV-Y, TV-G, TV-PG for television shows. But to make it simple, there are four different categories: Little Kids, Older Kids, Teens, Adults. Note that when you set it all the way to Adults — PIN protection is turned Off.

As we mentioned, Netflix has improved its parental controls rolling out to everyone and lets you set a PIN to restrict specific titles, regardless of rating. If you don’t see the option to restrict specific title, hold tight, you should see it in the coming weeks. Just type in the show or movie name in the search field and choose it when it comes up in the search results.

Netflix Parental Controls allows you to restrict content by age rating or specific TV show or movie title.

If you set allowed content to “Older Kids”, for example, if you want to watch a program rated PG-13 or higher, you’ll need to type in your PIN to access it.

Netflix Enter PIN Watch Restricted Content

Keep in mind that once you set it up, a PIN will be required across all devices and user profiles that are logged in with your account.  You don’t need to worry about setting it up individually for your tablet, phone, Roku, Fire TV…etc. And, if your kid selects your profile, while they will see your playlists, they can’t access any restricted mature content.

If your kid opens your profile, they need the secret PIN to view anything on your list.

The new ability to PIN-protect specific programs is nice because you might not approve of a show’s subject matter. Or, maybe you want to ground your kid and prevent them from binging one of their favorite programs over the weekend. They should be doing homework or playing outside instead. Whatever the case, having parental controls to help restrict what they watch is most helpful for a parent.

Do you use the parental controls offered on Netflix in your household? How do you use them and in what way would you like to see improvements? Leave a comment in the section below and share your thoughts.

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Steve Krause

    Great article Brian. Thnx for this. Didn’t realize Netflix updated the feature set of the parental controls with a pin. Without the pin, my kids could just move between the profiles to get around any viewing restrictions. Sooo glad they finally got this done.

  2. Alfredo

    I need to ability for the title to just disappear from the listings, as to avoid the fight with the kids. I guess Netflix doesn’t like this, in case it generates extra marketing via the kids discussing how much they hate their parents?

  3. Redpanzie

    I would like to be able to hide some shows from my kids completely. The thumbs up and down down work with the kid profiles and that blows.

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