Disney Plus Parent's Guide
Parent's Guide to setting up Disney Plus for Children and Teens
Parents can restrict Disney+ for their children or teens using parental controls and profile restrictions.
Parents often sign up for Disney+ with the expectation that it's a better streaming option for kids. However, with different movie franchises and TV shows to choose from that are not always appropriate for kids, parents often realize that Disney+ has fewer features when it comes to parental controls. This is a complete guide for parents that walks parents through the process of setting up parental controls that work for their family, step by step.
Why Controls Are Important For Children And Teens Watching Disney+
While Disney as a company has a long reputation for making family-friendly movies, the Disney+ app adds other franchises to their catalogue that are intended for adults. Parents can take advantage of parental controls to limit which options their child or teen can watch.
Disney+ doesn't have many parental controls features but tends to be fairly restrictive
As noted on Reddit , Disney errs on the side of caution when it comes to what kind of content is available for kids. Parents can use this as an advantage, limiting the options children can watch by themselves and allowing more options for a family movie night.
There is still some leeway here, and you aren't limited to using Disney+'s junior mode only. Teens, for example, can have their profile set to allow movies rated PG or PG-13, depending on their level of maturity.
There are many franchises available in Disney+'s catalogue that are not appropriate for kids or even teens
Disney+ includes most of the classics, but because of the sheer number of new titles, parents often need to limit what movies or shows their children or teens can watch.
Disney+ does allow parents to set a maximum content rating.
Setting Up Disney Plus Parental Controls for Best Results
Disney+ has features that allow parents to create multiple profiles for members of their family. However, depending on the size of your family, you may choose to use one profile for younger children and reserve one for parents or older teens.
Set up parental controls on Disney+ like this:
- Set up profiles on Disney+
- Customize each profile with content settings
- Lock restrictions with a PIN
(1) Set Up Profiles
When it comes to younger kids, Disney+ has Junior Mode, which has a very limited selection of movies or shows. Many parents decide to set up Junior Mode for the youngest kids in their family, and possibly add individual profiles for older teens.
You can create a new profile like this:
(2) Customize content on profiles
Before saving changes to your new profile:
If you've already created an profile and want to enable Junior Mode:
If you have an older teen and you want to instead set a max content rating for their profile:
Please note that you may want to disable "Allow titles without ratings like live sports, news, and more" if you're setting this up for a Teen and you're bundled with ESPN+. This is enabled by default for any profile not set up with Junior Mode.
(3) Lock restrictions with a PIN
A parental control PIN is one of the most important steps, since this PIN is what prevents settings from being changed easily.
You can go a step further and restrict your Disney+ account's password. This password is required for anyone who wants to log in, but it is also used to disable parental controls. Parents should consider taking these steps:
Many browsers will automatically save passwords for any accounts, so you may need to remove them and confirm that it hasn't been saved. Here's how to remove saved passwords from multiple web browsers .
Here's how to change your Disney+ account's password .
How to Review Your Teen's Activity on Disney Plus
Unfortunately, Disney+ only lets parents infer watch history using the Continue Watching section on each profile, although parents should know that it's possible to remove items from this list.
As a result, it's far more important for parents to prevent their child or teen from being able to access movie or TV show titles in the first place.
Consider parental controls for your child's smartphone
Parental Controls can be improved on Disney+ by adding additional controls specific to your child or teen's smartphone. These restrictions often aren't exclusive to Disney+, so you can apply these to other apps.
This is the ideal option to consider if:
- Your child uses either an iPhone or Android smartphone
- You're looking for more effective ways to monitor your child's activity across multiple apps
If you and your child have iPhones, see our dedicated parents' guide to the iPhone .
If you and your child have Android smartphones, see our dedicated parents' guide to Android .
If you and your child have a mixture of the two, you may be able to consider a combination of both approaches on both Android and iPhone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my own primary profile automatically set to TV-MA?
This is the default age rating for a new Disney+ account, but fortunately, you can change this by:
Will the content restrictions I set on Disney+ also apply to Hulu and ESPN+ content if I have these streaming services bundled?
Both Hulu and ESPN+ content listed for a profile will also be filtered depending on which content rating you've set for that profile.
However, please note that ESPN+ has a lot of content that isn't rated (live-streamed content, for example). If you'd prefer your teen not to see this content, ensure that "Allow titles without ratings like live sports, news, and more" is disabled under the parental control section for their profile. This will be disabled in Junior Mode.
Can I set a unique PIN for each profile on Disney+?
Yes, each profile can use a unique PIN. We strongly recommend doing this if you're setting up profiles for multiple members of your family and want to discourage sharing profiles.
At a minimum, parents should consider setting a PIN on the main Disney+ profile.