Nintendo Switch Parental Cont…

First, i love this app. It is perfect for controlling play time for one child. I think if there were more kids involved I’d prefer the ability to grant time based on account. For younger children i would prefer the ability to shut off all access unless time is granted. I accomplish that by using the “vary by day” and then i have ability to set every day to zero time. Around the house i give the kid ability to “earn” nintendo time. Very motivational. Then i extend his play time when tasks are completed. The app/console interface frequently glitch out though. Like the app still stuck on yesterday. So when i extend (grant) 30 minutes the app gets confused - does it grant 1 hour, picking up on yesterday, or it has yesterday’s total time in mind and the 30 min grant of time still comes off as used up. If forces us to do a sequence of turning of the machine, cancelling, reextending and manually refreshing the app to get it to work right. This is on 2.2 version of app and Switch 1. If this improves noticeably Im going to be a big fan.

I was super excited to learn that the Switch had parental controls. Unfortunately the options are severely lacking, rendering useless the parental control feature. As others have mentioned, the inability to set parental controls (time limits, content ratings) for individual users is a complete non-starter. My next thought was to set a combined time limit for the whole family, and then use the app to monitor whether family members were self-managing and splitting the time equitably. This too is not possible, as the app’s accounting of time per user is wildly inaccurate. Lastly, it would be nice if two instances of the app could be linked to the same Switch console (e.g. both mine and my wife’s iPhones) for co-parent monitoring. Assuming Nintendo fixes all of the above, this app could actually fulfill its assumed promise. From there it would be amazing to also be able to set parental controls for my kids’ Nintendo 3DS consoles using this same app. Even cooler would be if screen time limits per kid were enforced cross-device, which would allow parents to mange total daily screen time regardless of which Nintendo device their kids are using. After all, what’s the purpose of making parents establish Nintendo accounts and IDs for each kid if not to ultimately provide features like this? Or is it just so Nintendo can track, profile, and sell stuff to my kids? Disappointing.

During COVID, playing with friends has become both an important outlet and a concerning pattern and need for my 12 year old boy. Among other things when it comes to helping him be balanced with gaming and school and physical activity and etc, I would like more control over setting a time window with start AND end times that stick. And somehow my kid seems to play through the limits consistently when on Fortnite. Honestly it makes me want to get rid of the Switch to get rid of that stress and conflict in my life because the way controls are designed now he feels like I am an enemy, doing something to him. It would be way better if there were a way for him to participate in a healthy way. I do appreciate that the controls exist at all but feel like it’s an MVP. I find myself wondering …how might the super smart Nintendo designers enhance what exists and create a kid-facing approach to help them be a part of learning to self-manage and monitor? Pediatricians and child development experts are clear that 2 hrs of screen time is a MAX for healthy well-rounded children, across all platforms. Let’s all work together to make that more viable? Thanks for asking.