How to Use Xbox One Parental Controls

Nothing is more precious and valuable than your children. For years, makers of electronics have tried to remember this as they enabled their devices to do more. The cable box below your television set has a rating system that lets you choose what your kids can and can’t see. Smartphones come equipped with locks that allow you to decide what apps they download and what features they can tamper with. Xbox One parental controls allow you to take these principles and apply them to your family’s entertainment and gaming hub.

Xbox consoles have offered parental controls for years, but only in the last few years have they really come into their own. The Xbox One and Xbox One S allow every member of the family to use the same digital games and the Xbox Live Gold status of a single person. Adding this ability meant that Microsoft could encourage everyone to have their own accounts. You’re free to choose your child’s account out of a menu and make tweaks to it when you want. You can decide what games they’re able to play and whether they voice chat with friends is also in your hands. Activity reports keep you abreast of what they’re doing.

Read: How to Set Up Android Parental Controls and Content Filtering

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Xbox One parental controls to monitor what your child does, decide what games they play and manage their screen time.

How to Use Xbox One Parental Controls: What You Need

There are some things that you’ll need to set up Xbox One parental controls successfully. Some of them, you’ll have likely assumed. Others aren’t so obvious.

You’ll want to have your Xbox One console nearby, along with the Xbox One wireless controller. You don’t want to attempt this with the Xbox One Media Remote or by giving voice commands to the Kinect for Xbox One sensor. Be logged into your personal account on the Xbox One, if you can. If you can’t, be ready to log into Microsoft’s online account management website with the username and password that you use for the company’s other products.

How to Use Xbox One Parental Controls: Online

The Xbox One is just another Windows 10 device, to let Microsoft tell it. This means that you can use the Microsoft Family site to monitor what your kids are doing. This is the same portal that helps monitor activities on smartphones, tablets, notebooks and desktops running Windows 10.

Read: Parental Controls in Windows 10: How to Setup Microsoft Family

Head to Account.Microsoft.com. Sign in to the site using the same Microsoft Account that’s connected to your Xbox One or Windows 10 PC. Microsoft Accounts are also used for Outlook.com and Skype. Once you’ve logged in, select the Family tab from the top menu.

If you don’t see a child account listed for your kid, use the Add a Child button to create one. If they have an account already that you’d like to turn into a Child Account, you simply send them an invite. You can also create a new Child Account for them.

Once the account is configured properly, you can use this area to monitor how much time they’re spending on the Xbox One, what media they’re seeing and more. You can also use the system to track them down and get their location – provided they’re signed into an Xbox One at a friend’s house.

Read: GTA 5, The One Game You Shouldn’t Buy Your Kid

How to Use Xbox One Parental Controls: On Xbox One

You’ll need to take that Child Account from the Microsoft Family website and configure it as your kid’s account on the Xbox One. That’s if, you created an entirely now Microsoft Account for them. If you sent them an Microsoft Family invite to an account they had already, everything should already be working.

Sign in to your account on Xbox. This could be your existing account or one that you’ve just created on the console.

Press the glowing Xbox logo on your controller to open the Xbox Guide. Xbox consoles running older versions of the software Microsoft makes available might have to hold the Xbox logo down for a few seconds before the Xbox Guide appears.

Once in the Xbox Guide, use the joysticks on your controller to navigate to the Settings area in the Xbox Guide. Select All Settings from the list.

Inside the Settings app, look for the Family option. Use the joystick to highlight it and the A button to enter it.

Here you will find every account that’s connected to your Xbox One. You can use the Add Account option to add the Child Account you created if it isn’t there already. Remember, for Xbox One parental controls to work effectively, you’ll need your kid on a different account than the one the rest of the family uses for Xbox Live.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ve already added the account with the wizard hat named Paige. Select an account in your family to deep dive into its parental controls. Everything is divided into categories. There’s Privacy & Online Safety, Access to Content and Web Filtering. Web Filtering is an on-off switch that lets you decide what your kids can and can’t see.

Access to Content is one of the more important settings. The Xbox offers television shows, music, games and apps. These have their own rating systems, depending on where you live. You need only select what age group your child is in.

The Privacy and Online Safety page is what you’ll want to spend the bulk of your time on. There are presets that allow you to determine how private or public you want the account to be based on age level and maturity. Using the Custom option, you can decide every setting specifically. Don’t go with the custom options unless you have the time to sift through all the different settings that are there.

Read: How to Figure Out if Games Are Right for Your Child

Good luck with Xbox One parental controls.