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On Wednesday, Sony announced a new way for parents to monitor and control their kids’ gaming habits on both PS5 and PS4: the new PlayStation Family app.
The app, which is free to download on both iOS and Android, takes the existing parental controls you can access on the console directly, but adds the ability to remotely review and manage settings and activity at any time. It joins other mainstream gaming companies, like Microsoft and Nintendo, who also have parental control apps of their own.
Here’s what Sony says you can do with the app:
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Guided setup: This feature walks you through the steps necessary to set up a child account to use on your PlayStation console.
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Real-time alerts: This feature tells you when you child is playing a game, as well as what game they happen to be playing. From here, you can approve or deny requests for additional playtime, to play restricted games, or to chat over a mobile device.
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Activity reports: This section generates both daily and weekly reports of the games your kids are playing, and how long they’re playing.
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Playtime management: You can set limits on the amount of time kids can play each day of the week. Kids can request more playtime, and you can approve those requests from the app.
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Spending: You can add more money to your kids’ accounts, see the current balances of their accounts, and choose a monthly limit for how much they can spend on the PlayStation store.
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Content filters: You can choose what types of content your kids can experience. Sony has presets that can apply blanket settings for various age groups, but you can customize these settings to your own preferences.
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Privacy settings: Choose how your kid can interact with others online.
As someone without kids, this seems useful, and is very reminiscent of something like Apple’s Screen Time feature. I think it’s a huge plus to have the ability to not only set parental controls, but review your kid’s PlayStation activity in tandem. It also gives kids some extra agency to make requests directly through the console: Both Screen Time and PlayStation Family let kids request more playtime and ask permission for purchases. As a parent, I imagine it’s convenient to see those requests as notifications, and to approve or decline them as needed.