Online streaming and parental controls

Sangeet Toor

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Netflix. Amazon Prime. Hotstar. YouTube. Digital media is ubiquitous with these easy to remember names. A few more are leaping into this omnipresent wonderland, like Disney+. What these platforms have to offer are the simply the fantastical moving images for consumption — the love and fallout between the characters, camaraderie and enmity, murders and deaths, compassion and indifference, gore and lust.

After a long day, the families settle down in front of some sort of a screen to blow off the steam from the realities of their own existence and enter the realm of a fictional world. But the fictional world has mutated over the past decade. Shows like Game of Thrones, Sacred Games, Narcos, etc. set a higher standard for what are one’s tolerable limits to consume a murder, even of infants, or the crude actions or inactions of naked bodies. Anything less might not be enthralling anymore. The limits have been pushed, and simple killings and innocent sex is passé. Anything that is not the pinnacle of salaciousness is not entertaining.

I recently bought my first TV set. The dealer, a woman who knew me personally, expressed her concerns over her children wandering on Netflix and probably watching the elaborate sex scenes while she was out selling appliances. She warned me that my children might be exposed to such inappropriate images. Valid concerns. However, the concerns do not mean that one needs to hover like a helicopter over the children. It just means that the parent needs to educate herself, and then make informed choices for them. I researched the parental controls for the major subscriptions, and got the ones that allow such controls.

On Netflix, in the Settings tab, there is the Parental Controls section. It asks you to set a PIN that is not shared with the children, of course. The content restriction is by age — all ages, 7+, 13+ and 16+. If the freely allowed content by you is anything which is 7+, then when someone clicks on a show rated 13+, the previously set PIN must be entered to watch it. The controls are mirrored across all the profiles on a given account. Additionally, there is an option to restrict shows and movies by titles. There may be some all ages rated shows that a parent might find troublesome.

Similarly, there are restrictions and controls on YouTube and Amazon Prime that can be easily set by a parent. However, Hotstar lags behind when it comes to any kind of controls. I do have Hotstar, but only on my phone which is inaccessible to my children.

Why even talk about controlling what children should or shouldn’t watch? Why have concerns for only the sexual content? Why not for the untamed violence?

My younger son, who is not yet six, returned from school the other day, crying incessantly. He refused to go to the school in the future. Reason: a seven-year-old gave him graphic details of how he would kill him. A knife was involved, and cutting of the neck. The same kid intimidated another child with different details — his innards will be pulled out from the stomach. How does a child know so much about the human anatomy and two different ways of killing someone else?

The concern is not what your child is watching on Netflix when you are chatting with your friends on the phone. Really. The concern is what you are watching on TV when your child is sitting in your lap. If multi-season adult shows have normalised sex and violence for a parent, then the same has been normalised for the child also. Parental controls are redundant if the parent does not know what to control and why to control.

Apart from looking for what can be restricted, a small exploration of the digital media platforms can reveal the hidden gems too. Series like Our Planet, narrated by David Attenborough, are profoundly significant for building up our consciousness of the climate change crisis. It was surprising that my children loved this series and asked tons of questions. I did not have answers to many, so, we Googled.

Recognising the fact that the ratings and age appropriateness is decided by a group of people who might have different set of values and perceptions than the parent. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the parent to sit, watch and decide the content for the child. If time does not allow, then observing the behavioural changes in your child can throw clues to how a show is impacting the child. If he goes around school, glorifying killings and detailing the butchery, it’s time to sober up as a parent.

You can restrict, you can control, but you can’t forget that society plays a huge role in defining what children want to watch. They do want to watch big boys shows because that’s what their peers watch. I accompanied my children when they watched Marvel movies, which are mostly 13+. Their classmates had watched those and they felt like outsiders in the conversations. The exceptions need to be reasoned with the children too. Had it been The Vikings, there wouldn’t be an exception.

The children can have the remote control, but the remoter control, the real one is in your hands. Allow, disallow, reason. Leave their space for a bit without worrying about them wandering, and read A Room Of One’s Own.