Parents and guardians will agree that as much as a digitally connected world benefits their children and wards, it also presents its many disadvantages. The critical discussion, over time, has been focused on how young people can enjoy the benefits of a digitally connected world while being protected from the risks prevalent in such digital spaces. While this responsibility largely falls on parents and guardians, stakeholders across the value chain recognise the need for collaboration to protect young people online. This includes school administrators, private sector organisations, government, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

One effective method used to protect young people online is parental control, which refers to measures employed to monitor and manage their activities offline and online and plays a crucial role in ensuring a safe and healthy online environment for them. One aspect of parental control involves restricting or filtering content that may be inappropriate for a child’s age or maturity level. This can be achieved through content filters on streaming services, and others. This is especially important for streaming services like Netflix, which focuses on giving families an enriched entertainment experience with age-appropriate content for every age group. Parental controls, as a feature, give parents control over the content their children consume.

As the Christmas holidays approach, the biggest worry of every parent is how to keep their children entertained throughout the festive period without exposing them to inappropriate content online. Setting up parental control on Netflix is one hack that gives parents total control over the kind of content their children consume. With content like Supa Team 4, underage children can have a nice streaming experience without parents worrying. The animation, which is Netflix’s first from Africa, launched its first season in July and is returning for a second season on 21 December, continuing the story with more exciting episodes. The animation is about four teen girls who are undercover superheroes living in the neo-futuristic African city of Lusaka. With Netflix’s parental control feature, parents have complete control over their kids’ content while keeping them entertained.

Parents and Guardians in Nigeria often perceive streaming services as safe spaces because of the paid services, curated aspects of streaming content, and parental control features. In today’s digital age, where children have easy access to various devices and the internet, parental control plays a crucial role in ensuring a safe and healthy environment for their development. In a recent study on safeguarding children online carried out in nine countries, including Nigeria, it was revealed that parents broadly share the same hopes and fears regarding their children’s online behaviours regardless of geographical location. The 2023 report titled ‘Safeguarding Children Online: A service-specific view on risks and parental attitudes’ was developed by the Telecommunications Management Group, Inc. (TMG), in partnership with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in its role as an expert agency on child online protection.

The report explores the experiences of parents/caregivers and children as they experience the benefits and navigate around the challenges of children’s lives online across a range of services, including messaging applications, online games, streaming services, social media, and user-generated content platforms. Data from the report showed that parents, especially in Nigeria, are more comfortable with some services, like streaming services, than social media and other user-generated content platforms.

The report on safeguarding children online was the main focus of discussion as stakeholders in Nigeria’s creative industry, parents, and guardians were hosted to an insightful conversation at the recent Netflix Safe Screen and Digital Entertainment Spaces Forum during the third Nigeria Digital Content Regulation Conference (NDCRC). The event is hosted annually by the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), and conversations focused on creating a safe digital space for young people in Nigeria.

The forum, themed “Creating Safe Digital Spaces: Getting the Most Out of Film and Entertainment for Young People”, was initiated to cultivate an ecosystem where parents, teachers, government, non-profit organisations, and other relevant stakeholders consistently collaborate to ensure digital safety. The flagship event had panel sessions on digital empowerment and online safety, with a chat on safeguarding children online with a view of risks and parental attitudes using findings from the TMG and ITU 2023 research. The study, which formed a basis for most of the conversations, revealed that parents are still concerned about the risks, including potential exposure to harmful content.

Speaking on Netflix’s commitment to digital safety for young people in Nigeria, Shola Sanni, Netflix’s Director, of Public Policy in SSA, said, “At Netflix, we always try to understand the countries where we operate and what our partners in those countries want from us. We make sure that we find the commonality and synergies that enable the objectives of our partners to grow as our business grows. Netflix provides the service to curate all of this content, so it is very important to us that our partners, whether creators, subscribers, parents, or teachers, can trust that Netflix is a safe destination, especially when it comes to the children and the young people who also watch the service.”

Speakers at the panel sessions included representatives from Paradigm Initiative, Mirabel Centre, Cece Yara Foundation, University of East London, INHOPE, TechSocietal, Simeones Oasis Foundation, etc. Other panelists include representatives from the NFVCB, NCC, NITDA, NHRC, NDPC, NDLEA and more. The conversation at the forum evaluated the current digital landscape, discussed popular film and entertainment platforms, and addressed content trends while examining associated challenges.

Delivering the welcome address, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), Alhaji Adedayo Thomas, said, “This forum is made to bring together key stakeholders including parents, teachers, school administrators, online content providers, advocacy, industry experts and policymakers. The objective is to discuss digital enlightenment and empowerment measures and collaborative approaches to enhancing online safety for children and young people. This dialogue is a vital component of our collaborative initiatives to promote responsible digital parenting and facilitate age-appropriate online experiences for children and younger individuals on digital entertainment platforms.”

How to use Netflix’s Parental Control Tools

Create different profiles for different ages
You can create up to five profiles on Netflix, and for each profile, you can now set different maturity levels so it only shows age-appropriate series and movies. Simply go to the Profiles page and click on “Add Profile”.

Discover the “Profile and Parental Controls” hub
All the profile-level settings you might need to control for your and your kids’ account is in one place. Access it from your Account settings. From language to content restriction by age, and changing playback settings, you can do it all from this one place.

Set Viewing Restrictions
After you made a separate profile for your teenage kid, or younger child, it’s time to make sure they can only access films and shows appropriate for them. Click on “Viewing Restrictions” from the Parental Controls hub, and select the right age group. Once you do this, that profile can only see content suitable for that age. Don’t worry, your kid can’t go in and change it. It needs the account password to access.

Set a Profile lock
You set an age-appropriate profile for your child. So far, so good. But still worried that they might go into your profile instead and have access to all the shows and films. Simply set a 4-digit PIN for each Profile on your account. Click on “Change” under Profile Lock, select “require a PIN” and set a 4-digit PIN. On the Profile page, you will now see a lock sign on your profile. And anyone trying to access it will be asked to enter the PIN. Added tip: You may also want to select “Require PIN to add new profiles”. What this does is it prevents anyone else but you from creating a new profile. So, your clever teenager isn’t adding a new profile with access to all shows and movies.

Control your playback settings
Want to prevent your children from watching back-to-back episodes of a series? From “Playback settings” on your Profile Hub, simply de-select “autoplay next episode”. You can even choose not to autoplay previews on a profile, simply by deselecting “autoplay previews”.

Restrict specific titles
When you set age-wise profiles, Netflix does a pretty good job of deciding what shows and films are good for that age depending on the ratings. But you can still decide that you don’t want your kid(s) to watch a particular title. From “Content Restrictions”, you can simply exclude a title, or a few of them, by adding them to the “title restrictions” list. It’s your family. And we think you know best what’s good for them.