What are broadband parental controls?
Broadband parental controls are tools that allow parents to control and manage their children's internet access.
These tools allow you to filter content, limit online time, and monitor your child's internet activity. You’ll find customisable settings in three main places:
Your home Wi-Fi: Broadband customers should get free parental controls for their household internet which can be activated at any time, through a web-based interface or a mobile app. We have more below on what each broadband provider offers and how to set these up.
Specific digital devices: Many devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles, also have built-in parental control features.
Online services: Sites like BBC iPlayer and YouTube have parental control settings to help restrict access to inappropriate content.
All these features are designed to help you create a safer online environment for your children. However, it's important to remember that no system is completely fool proof. Open communication with your children about online safety and responsible internet use is just as important. Don’t hide the fact you are using parental controls, talk about your reasons for switching these on and why these tools are so important.
What type of features can you get with parental controls
What you can do with these depends on device or provider, but you should be able to get a good mix of:
- Content filtering: Block access to websites, apps, and functions that may contain inappropriate content, such as adult material, violence, or harmful content.
- Screen time limits: Set daily or weekly time limits for device usage, helping to get a healthier balance between online and offline activities.
- App restrictions: Control which apps your child can download and use, ensuring they only access age-appropriate and safe applications.
- Location tracking: Monitor your child's location.
- Activity monitoring: View reports on your child's online activity, including websites visited, apps used, and time spent on devices.
- Communication controls: Manage who your child can communicate with online, such as restricting calls, messages, and social media interactions with strangers.
- In-app purchase restrictions: Prevent accidental or unauthorised purchases
- Explicit content filtering: Block explicit language, images, and videos
- Age-based restrictions: Set age-appropriate restrictions on content, apps, and games based on your child's age and maturity level.
- Remote management: Manage and control your child's device settings remotely from your own device.
Parental controls for…
Games consoles
It’s not just screen time limitations that are important with gaming, it’s easy to forget that consoles allow players to connect to the internet and talk to people all over the world, so setting controls on devices and on the platform itself is important. Most games consoles come with settings, which can be put in place for either the device itself or the games platform. They all vary depending on what game and what device, the intrnetmattrs.org has great step-by-step guide for parental controls on all video games, consoles and platforms.
Search engines
Google, YouTube and Yahoo are just some of the most powerful search engines that allow kids to find anything they want instantly. Unfortunately, these search engines also allow them to find the things you don’t want them to find. Google Family Link is a great free app that you can add filtering blockers to your child’s search engine. You could also encourage your child to use safer search engines such as Google's Safe Search Kids which has additional filtering to block out potentially harmful material.
Mobiles, computers, tablets
All mobiles, tablets and computers have parental control settings, which can differ between devices, these include: disabling in-game or in-app purchases, location settings and restrictions, screen time settings. On Apple devices such as iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV etc. there are features available for parents all tied into an account. You can set content and privacy restrictions, prevent purchases, allow or disallow apps and more. See what parental controls are available on Apple iOS devices.
Apps and online services
Many social media, apps and online services such as film and TV streaming services have features such as: content filters, chat filters, privacy settings, in-app purchase settings. You can find out about these features by looking in the settings on each app, or take a look at their website for more information. They might be called settings, family features, privacy or security. For example, Facebook has a Parents portal and Netflix you need to visit the website to set up parental controls
.
Broadband controls with home broadband and Wi-Fi
Home internet providers should all offer parental controls for your family. You can use a filter from your internet provider to control the content that you and your family see. Some providers allow different settings for each user. Some (a lot of the free ones) don't, so whatever settings you choose will be for everyone on the Wi-Fi.
Remember that these parental controls only work when accessing the internet through the Wi-Fi – if your children are using 4G or 5G etc to connect you need to check the settings on their individual mobile device too.
Parental controls with BT broadband
BT have a free suite of parental controls accessible through the ‘My BT’ app or online portal. Once activated, all devices connected to your BT Hub will have content filtered to a restriction level that you set.
The key features include:
- Customised filter levels that can be set on a timer
- Works when using your BT ID on UK BT Wi-fi hotspots
- Blocked sites that you can add too
- Set up homework timers
- Safe search enforcement on search engines
You can set up BT Parental Controls by logging into My BT at www.bt.com/mybt. Find "Manage your Extras" towards the bottom of the page. Click “Choose what your kids can see online” and then “Manage BT Parental Controls”. Here you can choose to use the filters or customise your own filters.
Parental controls with Virgin Media broadband
Virgin Media broadband has customisable parental controls. There is a free suite with its Essential Security tool that is built-in and turned on automatically by default, anyone not wanting it will have to manually switch it off.
Virgin Media Essential Security
Essential Security keeps you and your family safe online by protecting any device that’s connected to your home broadband network. It does this by blocking access to sites it believes are unsuitable for children, fraudulent or that contains viruses.
As with most of the free tools the site blocking is at network-level, so will apply to all users not just kids.
- Blocks hackers and harmful content
- Provides adjustable parental controls
- Set a time for filters to be on or off
- Choose to block unsuitable categories: pornography, violence, crime, hate, drugs, hacking, self-harm, address-hiding
- Automatic protection for every device connected to your home Wi- Fi network
Essential Security is automatically turned ‘On’ by default to ensure the safety of you and your family online. If you’re looking to customise your settings, you can do that by:
logging into your "My Virgin Media" account, navigating to "Account Settings" then "Online Security", where you can block specific website categories, add individual websites to block or allow, and set time restrictions for when parental controls are active.
Parental controls with Sky broadband
Sky Broadband has a free parental control service called Sky Broadband Shield.
It offers malware protection and parental control settings to restrict content during certain times.
Sky Broadband Shield is automatically active and is set up for anyone using your broadband connection, but you can customise access to content and more. However, it does not allow you to set screen time limits, so be sure to set this in the apps and platforms they use.
To turn it off, or change age levels or watershed times – there are multiple options including PG, 13+, 18+ – activate this either on the Sky website or on the Sky app. Find the broadband setting section and click on ‘Manage your broadband’.
Plusnet parental controls
Plusnet SafeGuard is the free online parental control tool that comes with Plusnet. You can set up filters and block inappropriate content. Once your broadband service is ready, you can activate and manage Plusnet SafeGuard via the Plusnet SafeGuard control panel in the My Account, here you can block specific categories and websites that you don't want to see.
NOW Broadband parental controls
NOW TV’s free parental control service is called Broadband Buddy. It allows you to control what websites your family can access and helps protect you from websites that try to collect your private information without your knowledge, and sites that might harm your computer or other devices.
To activate go to your nowtv.com login, turn on Broadband Buddy and choose the age rating for your family setup.
Vodafone parental controls
There’s a ‘content controls' panel on your My Vodafone account that you can change on a sliding scale, it has four options:
- ‘None’ – unrestricted access
- ‘Safe’ – Blocks access to sites containing malware and sites known for phishing
- ‘Super Safe’ – Blocks access to websites with hate, violence, weapons, drugs, crime, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and online dating content
- Ultra Safe – The same as ‘Super Safe’, but with added blocks for online games, social networks and websites containing content on sex education.
To change these settings, log into your Vodafone Home Broadband account and choose Content Control option.
Let’s talk about it
Parental controls are a great way to help keep your kids safe, but don’t stop there. We should be talking to our children about simple safety online strategies as soon as they show an interest in engaging with technology.
If you want advice on anything to do with keeping children safe online, Childnet is a great resource to turn to. This UK-based charity works directly with children and young people from the ages of 3-18, as well as parents, carers, teachers and professionals, finding out about their real experiences online and the positive things they are doing.
They are brilliant and advising on the type of conversations we should be having and the real experiences of children and young people and what needs to be done to make them safer.
Will Gardener, CEO of Childnet says:
"Parental controls are designed to help protect children when they go online. Childnet would recommend putting parental controls on the home Wi-Fi and all devices that your children might use. Key features to look out for are content restrictions (to block things like pornography), in-app purchases and time limits.
There are companies who will charge money to provide parental controls, but most Wi-Fi services, devices and apps have parental controls that you can use for free. Internet Matters has step-by-step guides on how to put many of these in place.
Whilst parental controls will reduce the chances of your child seeing something they’re not ready for, inappropriate content can still get through. Supervise younger children and keep talking about their online lives. It is also a good idea to test the parental controls yourself and adapt them as your children get older."
