Disney Plus Adds Parental Controls, Opening The Door For R-Rated Content

Streaming services give us access to thousands of hours of content, with only licensing agreements to act as curation. That's tantalizing for us grown-ups, but it's a far cry from the crafted experiences of specific television channels or a DVD collection. Parental controls are crucial to help make sure our kids--from toddler to teen--are able to watch the shows appropriate, and while Disney+ has lacked them since its launch in 2019, that's no longer the case.

Disney+ added parental controls this week, which feature a variety of age ranges, as well as the ability to add a PIN to lock profiles that have access to mature content so that you can still watch the Muppet Show on your profile, but keep control over what your children see. By default, accounts are set to view TV-14 and PG-13 content and below, which encompasses everything currently on Disney+.

Age Profiles for the service are as follows:

• 0+
• 6+
• 9+
• 12+
• 14+
• 16+
• 18+

In addition to creating a PIN, you can also restrict profile creation, enable "Kid-Proof Exit" to keep the little ones from leaving their pre-set profile, or set up a Kid's Profile, which drops the age restrictions and shows only content considered friendly for all viewers.

While Disney+ only features content only rated for TV-14 and below in American territories, the service just added Star, which brings in more mature content and is likely the reason behind these controls. In America, though, this might open the door for the service to bring in more of its Fox content, from mature superhero flicks like Logan and Deadpool, to Fox's Alien franchise.