The ultimate guide to family controls on 8 platforms kids love most, from YouTube to Roblox

These controls aren’t about spying; they’re about giving kids age-appropriate freedom while letting you step in when needed. They can help to support your child’s independence while allowing you to protect them from the worst bumps along the way.

Here’s our guide to the top platforms, devices, and social media children and teens are using today, and the clever parental controls you can switch on right now to make their online life a little safer. Plus, there’s some top tips to using parental controls (or not!) at the end.

Apple (iPhones, iPads, Macs)

What is it? Apple is a technology manufacturer that makes smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Their phones are among the most popular smartphone models in the west, and the chances are that every household will have at least one Apple product.

What can I do to keep my kids safe? Apple makes it surprisingly simple to set limits and approvals right from your iPhone. If your child uses an iPad, iPhone or Mac, these are the main tools worth knowing.

• Family sharing: Create a child account and manage their app downloads, purchases and subscriptions.
• The “Ask to buy” feature means your child can’t download apps or spend money without your approval.
• Screen time – allows you to set daily app limits, schedule downtime, and see weekly reports of how your child spends time online. You can also put on content filters under this setting, to cover apps and web content.
• Location sharing lets you keep tabs on where their devices are.
• Sensitive content warnings — explicit images are automatically blurred, giving your child a choice to ignore them or encouraging them to talk to you.
• Screen Distance – devices can nudge users to hold the screen further away from their face if they’ve been holding them too close to their faces for too long.

Android devices: Google Family Link

What is it? Google Family Link is a parental control app that lets parents manage Android devices. Android is another very popular operating system used by lots of smartphone manufacturers, so the likelihood is that if your child doesn’t have an Apple device, they do have an Android.

For parents of Android-using kids, Google’s Family Link is your best friend. It’s a free app you install on your phone to manage your child’s Android device.

What can I do to keep my kids safe?

• App approvals & reports – approve Play Store downloads, get activity reports and set daily screen time caps.
• Remote lock & location – lock their device with one tap or locate it instantly if lost.
• School Time – block distractions like games and social media during lessons and silence notifications, while still allowing educational tools.
• Contact management – approve, pause, or block who your child can message or call. Kids can request to add new contacts, but you get the final say. (Currently, this only applies to Google Messages and phone calls, not third-party apps like WhatsApp)
• You can also switch between multiple children’s profiles, manage privacy settings and app downloads, and see all screen time settings in one place.

YouTube: supervised teen accounts

What is it? YouTube is a video sharing site that is hugely popular among teens. It hosts videos, scrollable Shorts, and livestreams.

What can I do to keep my kids safe?

• Kids:
  • YouTube Kids — kids’ profiles on the platform allow children to explore the site within a safe environment of content that’s appropriate. Parents can hand-pick videos for children, as well as block/approve content, limit screen time, and keep viewing history separate from their own.
• Teens:
  • Supervised activity – you can link your YouTube account to your teen’s, which allows you to see their uploads, subscriptions, and comment activity.
  • Email alerts – both you and your child get notified when a video (even unlisted or private) is uploaded, or when live streams are watched.
  • Safer recommendations – YouTube restricts weight-loss, appearance-based and social aggression content for 13–17s.

There are some limits with YouTube teen accounts, though: teens and parents can both switch parental supervision whenever they want to, and you can’t control the algorithm or the videos that they watch.

Instagram: teen accounts and parental supervision

What is it? Instagram is a photo and video sharing app that is popular with older tweens and teens. It contains Reels, which is a scrollable sections just for short-form video.

What can I do to keep my kids safe?

• Private by default – teen accounts under 18 start off as private, so strangers can’t just follow or comment.
• Messaging limits – teens can only message people they follow, and unwanted messages from strangers are blocked.
• Sleep mode & breaks – notifications are muted between 10pm and7am, with prompts to take breaks.
• Parental supervision – you can link accounts to see who your teen has been messaging and the topics they engage with, without exposing private messages.
• Age-appropriate feeds – teens can pick from suitable topics of interest, shaping a safer feed.

Snapchat: family centre settings

What is it? Snapchat is another photo-based social media app that is hugely popular with teens. Users can send each other via images that disappear unless saved, as well as send instant messages and upload ‘snaps’ to their stories, where all of their friends can see them for 24 hours

What can I do to keep my kids safe? Snapchat’s Family Centre has settings that parents can use, and change as teens get older. Features include:

• View your teen’s friends and who they are chatting to
• Restrict sensitive content
• Disable Snapchat’s in-app generative AI chatbot
• Request your teen’s location and view their privacy settings
• Report concerns and accounts that may have violated Snapchat’s rules

Roblox: family controls, content labels and age-based safety defaults

What is it? Roblox is an online gaming platform that hosts lots of different games created by users. The Verge reported in 2020 that half of all American children under the age of 16 use it each month — so it’s huge.

Games are free to play, but the platform includes in-game purchases which are carried out with ‘Robux,’ its virtual currency. Each game has different content and has a different age rating.

Roblox has been criticised for the large amount of sexual and politically extremist content it hosts, but it has recently updated its parental controls.

What can I do to keep my kids safe? Parental settings are detailed but worth setting up because of the huge range of games, people, and content that kids can come across on the platform.

All new Roblox games are required to be labelled Minimal, Mild, Moderate or Restricted (which is 17+ and requires age verification), so you can choose which ones to allow your child to play.

• Parental dashboard – see and set limits on daily screen time, see weekly activity and top 20 games played, and set content maturity restrictions.
• Friend management – approve or block specific people and report suspicious contacts.
• Experience blocking – ban specific games completely, even if they fit into the general maturity level you’ve selected.
• Spending limits – control Robux purchases, manage chat and privacy settings.
• Age-specific protections:
  • Under 9s: only minimal/mild content is allowed
  • Ages 9–12: moderate content is allowed with parental approval
  • Under-13s: no private messaging or joining chat-based ‘hangout’ games
• Stronger moderation – automated tools flag harmful behaviour, chat is restricted for under-13s, and new AI voice moderation is rolling out.

Despite these controls, some inappropriate content can still be accessed on Roblox, the BBC has reported — so parents should pay attention to what their kids are doing when they are using it.

Fortnite: content ratings and parental controls

What is it? Fortnite is another online games hub with more than 260,000 different games and experiences. These include a first-person shooter game, survival games, a creative ‘sandbox’ mode, and cooperative games, all based on the same general gameplay. Most of them are free to play, but Fortnite includes in-platform purchases using their virtual currency, V-bucks, with which players can buy outfits, emotes (special dances or movements) and other accessories for their avatars.

What can I do to keep my kids safe? All games and experiences in Fortnite feature an age and content rating so parents and players can find experiences that are right for them.

• Cabined Accounts — these accounts are meant for children under 13 and restrict access to features like voice or text chat unless parents provide consent. These accounts require a parent’s email address and parents can set up controls through that.
• Parental controls, including:
  • Social permissions — manage who children can talk to on Fortnite text and voice chat, from limiting interactions to “friends only” or disabling voice chat entirely, using mature language filters, and friend request PINs.
  • Time limit controls — set specific windows of time for game play or limit the number of hours spent playing each day. You can monitor how long children spend in the game each week, too.
  • Managing spending — parents can set up purchasing permissions to approve real-money purchases of V-bucks, and there are features in place to prevent unwanted or accidental purchases.
  • Parental controls PIN codes are needed to set and modify any safety settings you put in place.

EE: Safer SIMs and in-store support (UK only)

What is it? EE, a UK mobile network company, is also offering family-friendly protections on their phone plans.

What can I do to keep my kids safe?

• EE’s Safer SIMs include scam call protection, spending caps, adult content filtering and allow children to message and use maps even when they run out of data.
• They have different plans depending on the level of parental control you want:
• The ‘Protected’ plan: blocks adult content and chat/dating/social media sites, enforces Google Safe Search, and reduces download speeds so that kids can only access essentials like messages, music, and maps.
• The ‘Guided’ Plan: blocks 18-rated material but has more moderate controls and higher download speeds.
• The ‘Trusted’ Plan: comes with 18-rated content blocked, but more and faster data.
• In-store sessions: EE offers free 30-minute appointments in 400+ stores (open to non-customers) to help parents set up phones with parental controls and discuss online safety.

Takeaway tips

Every platform your child uses — whether it’s their iPad, Android phone, Roblox or Instagram — has parental controls built in. It’s just a case of knowing where to look and taking 10 minutes to set them up. Here are some general tips:

• Research has found that design limitations can make them confusing or disruptive, force binary choices and sometimes hinder children’s normal app use, causing friction at home — so think about which parental controls are right for your family.
• Open, regular conversations about devices and online safety help. Parental controls work best in tandem with good communication about screen use and online safety, so children feel comfortable talking to their parents about what they see and do online.
• Talk about where AI and algorithms appear in your child’s online life, remind them not everything they see is real, and discuss risks such as deepfakes and scams.
• Set clear boundaries (e.g., device use in shared spaces, screen time rules), and review settings together so children understand why they’re in place.
• Make controls part of an ongoing family discussion so children know how to seek help, report issues and build resilience online.