Setting Parental Controls on Gaming Consoles

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This post is originally authored at the home security blog at FamilyHomeSecurity.com.

With one of this year’s data disasters involving the leak of sensitive information over the Playstation Network, many people are looking for new ways to secure their gaming consoles. For parents, this often means restricting what information their children can have access to while gaming. Using parental controls on gaming consoles is a great way to ensure that your children will have a safe gaming experience. Here are a few tips for adjusting the parental controls on your children’s gaming consoles.

Nintendo Wii

The Nintendo Wii is one of the most widely used gaming consoles in homes with young children. Fortunately, it also gives parents the most control over what content their children are exposed to. Here we will show you how to restrict content based on a game’s ESRB rating, as well as how your child interacts with online programs.

The first thing you’ll need to do is access the Wii System Menu, and then select ‘Parental Controls’. If this is your first time entering this menu, the Wii will ask you to create a 4-digit PIN and a security question to protect your changes. Once this is complete, you will be given a variety of options. You will probably want to focus on restricting the ‘Highest Game Rating Allowed’, which will allow to prevent your children from playing games with a higher ESRB rating than is appropriate for their age.

If your Wii is connected to the internet, you can also place limits on online features. Click on ‘Other Settings’ in the Wii system menu. Here, you can block your child from using the Internet or News Channel. You can also block sending and receiving of online messages, as well as “user-created content” (pictures, videos, etc). From here, you can also restrict the use of Wii points, which are used to purchase games from the Wii Shop Channel.

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is an extremely popular video game console manufactured by Microsoft. Microsoft has created an entire section of their console dedicated to parental controls, which is called the ‘Family Center’ or ‘Family Setting’ (depending on what time of membership you have on Xbox Live). In this section, you can control which games can be played, which movies/TV shows can be watched, how long the console can be played on a daily/weekly basis, and whether or not your children can log on to Xbox Live.

All of these options can be manipulated in the ‘Console Safety’ section of the ‘Family Center’.

If you need step-by-step instruction, consult Microsoft’s official Xbox support page: http://support.xbox.com/en-us/pages/xbox-live/how-to/parental-control.aspx

Playstation 3

Like the previous two consoles, Sony has also incorporated parental controls into the Playstation 3. Before any parental controls are changed, you will need to create a password for yourself, which can be done in the ‘Security Settings’ submenu under ‘Settings’. The default password is ‘0000’, which you will need to enter before you can change it. After you have successfully created a password for yourself, proceed to the ‘Parental Controls’ menu under ‘Settings’.

Under ‘Parental Controls’ you will be able to restrict games by ESRB rating, as well as playback of DVD’s and Blu-ray discs. If you would like to block the usage of the Internet Browser, you can set this option as well, under ‘Internet Browser Start Control’. If you need to restrict Internet chat, or set a monthly spending limit for the Playstation Store – log into your master account and select ‘Playstation Network’ -> ‘Account Management’ and then ‘Manage Sub Accounts’.

For more information, refer to Sony’s official documentation: http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/3_15/basicoperations/parentallock.html

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