National Film Development Corporation (FINAS) has recently called for censorship of Netflix in Malaysia due to concerns by parents that children are watching uncensored content. According to a report, he said that although censorship is not under FINAS’ jurisdiction, they are viewing it seriously as the content will give negative effects if they remain unmonitored from now. He also added that uncensored content will provide a risk to the mind development of children if it is not started now.
If Netflix censorship is needed to control what kids watch, Netflix already has existing parental controls to restrict content for younger viewers. From the report, it appears that a lot of Malaysian parents and even FINAS are not aware of this key feature which Netflix has introduced to provide a safe space for kids to watch their shows.
For every new account, there’s a Kids profile that’s created by default. The profile even has a different user interface which highlights their favourite characters upfront. The folks at FINAS should definitely be aware about this since they are in the business of film development. For those who don’t, continue reading for the step-by-step guide.
Netflix Parental Controls
Parents can easily create additional profiles for their children and you can have a maximum of 5 profiles in one subscription. When you create a profile from the home screen, you can choose the maturity levels for TV shows and movies using the drop-down menu. You can even do this on existing profiles anytime by clicking on Manage Profiles button. Below is the step by step guide:
- Open www.netflix.com on your web browser and click on Sign In on the top right corner and log in with your username and password.
- Click on Manage Profiles.
- Select the Profile that you want to manage.
- Change “Allowed TV shows and movies“
- Hit Save.
Extra Parental Controls
But you might be wondering, what if a kid switches to his parent’s profile when they are not looking? For better control, parents could also enable a 4 digit pin which further restricts access to content based on maturity. You can even add-in specific titles that will require a PIN regardless of the maturity rating.
To do this, follow the following steps:
- Open www.netflix.com on your web browser and click on Sign In on the top right corner and log in with your username and password.
- Select your own profile, which has full access.
- Click on your profile picture on the top right corner and click on Account.
- Select Parental Controls under the Settings section.
- Enter your password
- Set your Parental Control Pin.
- Set maturity level
- Enter specific titles to restrict (if any)
- Hit Save.
These parental controls are available across all tiers of Netflix paid subscriptions, including the new RM17/month mobile-only plan.
At the time of writing, Harian Metro which originally reported the news had taken down their article titled “Netflix perlu ditapis“. What do you think? Should Netflix be censored when parental controls are already available? Or should parents be more responsible with the devices they provide to their children?
[ SOURCE 2, IMAGE SOURCE ]
