Keep Your Kid's PS5 Gaming In Check with the New PlayStation Family App

Yeah, I'm not having kids just to use this! No way!

I can already control what games my son can and cannot play and as for spending, there is no payment information saved to his account, as for how long he spends playing, I do this thing called talking and ask him to turn it off. Whilst these apps can be useful, they do seem like an alternative to actually paying attention to your children

I need this for my Balatro habit.

Why can’t they just build this functionality into the already existing app?

@FinneasGH this functionality is in the current PS app. A little clunky sure, but I can go into family settings set start and finish times, amount of time allowed, pegi rating access, individual game access and exceptions, spend limit per month.

Ok so I just downloaded it and it streamlines all the above. The app open straight on your child’s account with everything laid out clearly with graphs showing time played, time left, activity through the week etc.

@carlos82 nailed it. I care enough to ask questions and not just set arbitrary time limits on an app and forget about it. Plus I’m a gamer, so talking about the games were playing with my 12yr old is part of the gaming fun

@carlos82

Ah, the good old parentingway. What a time we live in we need apps for such trivial things.

Considering how good the Nintendo commercial was for their version of this, they missed a trick by not having Kratos and his son here.

@BintendoMan yeah my son is 8 and quite a lot of my gaming these days is playing with him or one of us watching the other

The whole "family group" is a massive loophole in security. I was spammed for multiple days in a row by some rando who kept inviting me to his family group as a scam. Basically, you can apparently send an invite to anyone as long as you have their email address, no matter what their privacy settings are on the console. The guy would set up fake email addresses (with deliberately rude domains that obviously wouldn't exist) to try and push people to contact him on Telegram, with the goal to steal their accounts. Because he immediately deletes his PSN accounts after sending the fake invites, you can't actually report him to Sony, because the username no longer exists by the time you try to do so. I tried to report this issue to Sony, but their customer support basically said "there's nothing we can do about a third party". It's been such a nuisance, I really wish there was a setting on the account to say "never allow family invitations from random accounts". My settings are already set to private "No one" or "close friends only" for everything possible, why is some rando still able to spam me through their family invitation system?

@carlos82 That is true but i dont understand why you have a issue with more options? Some people have a really busy life maybe not to much knowledge whats the issue.

Plus my parents worked their ass off all the time letting me take care of my two younger brothers.

Fair features if many of these features work that is, but I guess if have to over limit things compared to mutual talking with them then sure.

That aside I mean. These apps only do so much. It's not as 'stalking' like as the Gizmondo GPS idea before it was a game console or the Life 360 stuff I've seen and gone ok....

But even still if this does well enough besides a kid account or the age ratings of games or blocking the store or not enabling wifi to the console either among other things to easily do then sure by all means depending on how smart they are to work stuff out, choose to play and hour counts or whatever.

The only things I got parental controls for back in the day was the DS (not that I understood how to use the network settings, or DSi shop and so on anyway, same with PSP, never used the network settings, I didn't even understand what ad hoc was for years, did DS download play with Zelda Spirit Tracks or Four Sword Anniversary multiplayer but that's about it) or the internet and going to tv shows for kids type websites, or flash games, that's it. So not as much really.

Never even knew about the PS2 DVD restrictions, but checked the menu and yeah it's there.

Even games never saw Halo but played Blinx, Scaler, Battlefront 1 and 2, fair stuff for my age back then. Still play, re-bought or played others like it these days because they are great games or ideas in the games. Not all are good but still, it is what it is finding, collecting, playing games for gameplay.

The family setup is pretty dumb and annoying. Why don't Sony fold into all into the one app.

@Flaming_Kaiser I never said having more options was a bad thing, I even said such apps can be useful

Does it state what minimum age this is for?

@carlos82 My parents where always working i didnt have a teenage life always looking after my brothers. They feel terrible about me never having the chance to do stuff. But these things are usefull and some people need all the help they can get. My mom and dad worked 6 days a week from 5 till late. Believe me poor parents sometimes need all the help they can get.