How To Add Parental Controls To Your Amazon Fire TV

Thanks to the greater presence of consumer technology, kids these days are remarkably tech-savvy, able to operate devices and surf the web at a very young age. It's a good thing, for the most part, but that skill brings with it a bit of a problem — technology may be more kid-friendly, but there are a lot of things in the digital space that are very much not kid-friendly. 

Even with a device that lacks the full breadth of browsing potential that a PC has, like an Amazon Fire TV, your kids can still get into all kinds of material that you'd really rather they not.

Luckily, just as devices have become more accessible to kids, so too have they become easier for parents to maintain control over. With the help of the parental controls on your Amazon Fire TV, you can ensure your kids don't see anything that their young minds aren't quite ready for — not to mention keep them from running wild with your accounts.

If you want to restrict what your kids can access and use on your Amazon Fire TV, you can enable the device's built-in parental controls from its Settings menu.

1. On your Fire TV's home screen, select the gear icon for the Settings menu.

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2. On the Settings menu, select Preferences.

3. Select the Parental Controls option.

4. Select the "Parental Controls" toggle.

5. Using your Fire TV remote, enter a five-digit PIN number, then enter it again to confirm and enable Parental Controls.

Once the global parental controls have been enabled, the rest of the Parental Controls menu will be revealed, allowing you to fine-tune what exactly gets blocked and restricted. Just remember that you'll need your five-digit PIN to modify or disable these settings. 

If at all possible, try to commit your PIN number to memory rather than writing it down. If there's one thing kids are good at, it's finding physical password notes, no matter where you hide them.

Once the parental controls are enabled, three major changes in your Fire TV's functionality will occur. Firstly, whenever someone attempts to launch any app from the Fire TV's home menu, they'll be prompted to enter the five-digit parental controls PIN. No PIN number, no apps, no exceptions.

Secondly, age-gated content will also require the five-digit PIN to view. This particular restriction only applies to content viewed through Amazon Prime Video and over-the-air movie and television broadcasts. Anything that's rated above good for all ages will prompt a PIN entry to continue viewing. In the case of broadcast viewing, you can fine-tune what exactly gets blocked in the individual viewing apps.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, any attempts to purchase content through the Fire TV will prompt a PIN entry. Whether someone is buying video content, apps, or games, they'll need to enter the PIN before they can proceed to the payment screen.

If you ever want to change the PIN or disable the parental controls entirely, you can do so from the same Parental Controls menu that you visited to enable them. Just remember that you'll still need your original PIN in order to do either. If you ever forget your PIN, you can visit Amazon's PIN reset site and sign in with your Amazon account to reset it remotely.