How to protect individual shows or movies on Netflix with a PIN

Netflix announced plans to improve the built-in parental control functionality of the streaming service to give parents more control over what minors may watch on the service.

The service's parental controls are straightforward right now. Parents set up a four digit PIN and a maturity level in the Settings.

The maturity level separates minors into age groups, e.g. little kids from 0 to 5, and teens from 12 to 16. The selected level restricts content on the streaming platform. If you set the PIN protection level to older kids, any movie or show that is rated as 12 years or up is PIN protected on the site.

Content suitable only for adults, 18 years and older, is always restricted even in adult households without children.

Netflix maintains a special "kids" version that restricts shows and movies to content suitable for children.

The new parental control feature is added to the existing ones. You access them with a click on your profile icon, and the selection of Account > Parental Controls. Netflix prompts for the account password before the parental controls are loaded.

You can load the parental controls using this URL directly as well if that is supported by the device you are using.

The parental controls page displays the active PIN and the PIN protection level. The new "Restrict Specific Titles" functionality is listed below the current options. It enables you to PIN protect any content on Netflix by running a search for specific titles and selecting them.

The new functionality may be useful in the following scenarios:

• You want to PIN protect content that is not protected by default.
• You want to block your kids from watching a show or movie.
• You want to block your children from watching specific TV shows or movies without you giving permission.

Netflix plans to display the maturity level of TV series or films more prominently on top of that. The level is displayed on the screen when you hit the play button.

Netflix notes that the new functionality is rolled out in the coming months to users of the service.

Closing Words

Netflix's enhancements to the service's parental controls functionality gives adults more control over the protection of content on the service. You may use it to block shows or movies that children would be able to watch directly (without PIN) if you consider them not suitable for children of that age, or want to make sure that kids don't watch specific shows or films without you giving your permission first.

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