Account & Parental Controls

[Armand]

Here’s a question what way do you or would you set up your tablets accounts?

 

Since the kids will have their own tablets, I’m not sure either this simple set my account on it (with restrictions etc) or set up a shared account for them to use altogether.

[Alatar]

I've played around with Parental controls and to be honest they're always a disaster.  For example, setting up Conor as a child account on my PSN meant he couldn't avail of my free Vita games, but neither could he sign up for PSN+ himself.  As a result he's now sharing my account.  Same thing happened on XBox Live.  To get the free games I ended up having to disable the parental controls.  With iOS and Kindle, I have about 4-5 devices sharing the same accounts to save buying everything multiple times. 

In the end I just had to tell the kids, you know what you're allowed to do and what your not, and I rely on trust.  Old fashioned approach! :)

[Armand]

I think on the console it’s a good shout to do it that way. Outside of achievements I can’t see any good reason to have multiple accounts. Though did I read somewhere that the consoles might support some sort of shared accounts this new gen?

 

For tablets and Smartphone I’m thinking about getting the kids a shared account, especially for Android. Because At least that way it kinda grows with them. With things like iTunes\Play gift cards means they can control their own spending and tis a bit easier to keep under control, especially given my kids are a bit younger.

I want to check out Androids “mulituser” sand restricted profiles support. It looks like it would be great for giving them access to your account but under very restricted terms.

[Armand]

With the new tablets I have gone for a new shared account.  This would not suit everyone for sure. But I get more bang for buck having 3 kids all about the same age since they all get access to anything that goes on that account. I loaded up some gift cards & I don’t really have to worry about anyone going on spending spree when I do start to loosen the reigns on how locked down I have the tablets.