If you have children who use a Nintendo Switch, you may be concerned that they may talk to strangers in online games. Fortunately, Nintendo offers an easy way to turn off communication with others in its Parental Control app for smartphones. See how to set it up.
First, get Nintendo’s parental control app
Before restricting communication with others online, you will need to register the Switch console with Nintendo’s parental control application. Nintendo makes the application available for free download for iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Setup is easy and takes just a few minutes to adjust.
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How to restrict communication with others by switching parental controls
After enabling parental control on your Switch, open the Nintendo Switch Parental Controls app for your smartphone. If you have multiple switch consoles registered, select the switch you want to modify in the upper left corner of the screen. Then, tap “Console Settings” at the bottom of the screen.
Under “Console settings”, tap “Restriction level”.
In “Restriction level settings”, you will notice several predefined profiles, such as “Teen,” Pre-teen “and” Child “. If you select” Teen “, communication with other people in the games on that switch will be enabled. If you select “Pre-teen” or “Child”, communication with others in online games will be disabled by default.
But there is a better way to gain more granular control over these communication constraints. Touch “Custom settings” and “Communication with other people”.
In “Communication with other people”, change the button next to “Restrict communication with other people” to activate it.
Below the option “Restrict communication with other people”, you will see a list of games installed on that specific switch console. Using the toggle button next to each game, you can switch communication restrictions for a specific game.
So, if you want to allow communication only within a given game, like Minecraft, for example, you can turn off the switch beside Minecraft in the “Communicating with others” list, and your kids will be able to connect to online worlds and chat with strangers just for Minecraft.
Some examples of restricted communication on the switch
The “Restrict communication with other people” setting does different things in different games. As a general rule, it prevents players from sending any message to another player, whether by voice, text, design, sign or otherwise. Here are some examples.
- All games with voice chat: Voice chat will be disabled.
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Players are prevented from sending letters to friends between islands and from using the design kiosk connected to the Internet.
- Fifteen days: Players cannot chat by voice with other players.
- Minecraft: Prevents online play with other people, including friends.
- Splatoon 2: Players cannot read or share players ‘posts (the hand-drawn images that hang over players’ heads).
This is just a small sample of the many hundreds of games affected by the parental control setting “Restrict communication with others”. To see its effects in each game, you will have to do some experiments. If it works as planned, you should see a message similar to this view in Minecraft when trying to access online communication resources.
But, at least with Nintendo Switch parental controls, there’s no reason why your kids won’t like to play and, at the same time, give you a little peace of mind. Good game!