We’re cord cutters and are using Sling TV instead. Works great, and I love that I can keep up with my favorite TV shows on my smartphone. But my kids grab my phone sometimes and sneak shows we don’t want them to watch. Are there parental controls on the Sling TV app?
I’m also a fan of Sling TV and find it a great example of the latest generation of watch everywhere television; whether you’re on a phone, tablet, entertainment center, Casting to a TV or using a smart TV with its own apps, you can watch whatever you want, wherever you are. Add the simple DVR recording features of Sling TV where you can set up a recording from your phone and watch it when you get home, and it’s a huge improvement over the old days.
One unexpected benefit of having a single television family and no way to watch programs other than on the family room TV, however, was that kids were unable to sneak and watch inappropriate programs. Those days are long gone, however, and while Sling TV does have parental controls (we’ll get there in a sec) keep in mind that’s just the tip of this proverbial iceberg. Fact is, you name the show and there are probably hundreds of uploads on YouTube and similar available to view, not to mention torrent networks and similar not-entirely-legal alternatives. Stopping that’s considerably more difficult, and I’m speaking as a very digitally savvy parent…
But let’s tackle what we can. Sling TV parental controls. Launch the app on your phone and you’ll have something like this facing you:
You can see that the not-suitable-for-children Game of Thrones is on my favorites list, and that soccer is my featured sport. The app knows me well. 🙂
On the top left notice the three horizontal lines stacked up. That’s known in the biz as a “hamburger menu” and that’s what you want to tap to bring up the app menu:
Ever checked out the “Rentals” area for some rental movies? Oh, wait, let’s stay on task! Stay focused by tapping on “Settings” at the bottom of the menu choices.
You can guess the next step: Tap on “Parental Controls” to get to, well, the parental controls. No big surprise there, right?!
Now you can see the various ways to set things up:
We’ll get back to the individual settings, but to start, tap on “Enable” and it’ll prompt you to enter a PIN code. Only four digits, but that’s still 10,000 possibilities, right? Just don’t use the same code you have for your phone PIN or similar (my kids know mine!)
What’s nice is that once you set it up on one device, the parental controls are automatically enabled on every device that’s logged in to Sling TV, from your TV to the Web interface to other mobile devices. Smartly done, Sling!
Anyway, set up your PIN and now you can change the various settings:
My youngest is 14, so I’m fine with most content she might want to view, including TV-14 and PG-13 movies. R rated movies and TV-MA content? Not so much. Unrated content is usually benign (think documentaries) but that’s easy to block too. And purchases? Yeah, that’s the first thing I should probably lock before she realizes she can pay and watch all sorts of recent movies in the privacy of her own room!
Now let’s say that she decides she wants to watch the HBO series 2 Dope Queens. I don’t know why she’d want to do that, but… let’s say she does. That’s rated TV-14, TV-MA so the attempt to see an episode is going to intervene with a prompt for the parental PIN:
Exactly what you want. Easy for you or your partner to watch whatever you want, but now you don’t have to worry about your children tapping into your Sling account and watching inappropriate content. Better, the decision’s up to you as a parent, so you can block PG-13, even PG content if you want. It’s up to you, and it’s easy.
And now, back to a saved episode of Game of Thrones… 🙂
Disclosure: Sling TV sponsors my subscription to their service so I can write tutorials on how to accomplish various tasks in the service. Thanks, Sling!