Gaming console guides

How console controls are split

All three consoles divide control in two, and it catches parents out. There are the console’s own parental controls, which you set up once on the machine in your living room. Then there is the age on your child’s platform account, which is what actually decides which games they can buy and which chat features they get — and which follows them to any other console they sign in on, including a friend’s.

Voice chat is the usual gap. On all three it is governed by the account rather than by the individual game, so turning it off in one game changes nothing anywhere else.

Two people have to do something for console controls to hold. The console settings are yours, but the account age and most of the chat and privacy settings sit with your child and often need them to accept a family invitation from their own screen. A console configured while they were out is usually only half configured.

Handhelds and portable modes change the picture more than parents expect. A console that leaves the living room takes its screen time into a bedroom with it, and the time limits that matter are the ones set on the account rather than the house rule about the television.