Online safety for young players
The risks children meet online in games, and the settings and conversations that reduce them.
Age ratings cover a game''s content. They cannot cover who your child meets inside it. That is a separate risk and it needs separate handling.
The actual risks
Contact from strangers. Voice and text chat put a child in contact with adults they do not know, with no context and no supervision.
Unpleasant behaviour. Abuse in competitive games is common and can be distressing for a child who does not expect it.
Scams. Offers of free currency, skins or accounts in exchange for login details. Children are targeted for this specifically because it works.
Spending. Covered in parental controls, and the most common concrete harm.
Sharing personal information without understanding what it can be used for.
Settings that help
Create a child account under yours. Every control depends on it.
Restrict communication. All three platforms let you limit voice and text chat to friends only, or disable it entirely. For a young child, friends-only is a reasonable default.
Restrict who can send friend requests.
Turn off user-generated content where the platform allows it.
Set spending to zero and remove the saved card.
Exact steps for each console are in our guide to parental controls.
The conversation matters more than the settings
Settings can be worked around; understanding cannot. Three things worth saying explicitly to a child:
Nobody legitimate ever needs your password. Not a friend, not a moderator, not someone offering free currency. This one rule prevents most account theft.
Do not share personal details — full name, school, address, phone number, or photos. Not with people you only know from a game, however friendly.
Tell me if something makes you uncomfortable, and you will not be in trouble. This is the most important one. A child who fears losing the console will not report a problem — which is exactly the outcome you do not want.
Warning signs worth noticing
Secrecy about who they are playing with, distress after playing, a new "friend" who wants to move the conversation to another app, unexplained purchases or currency, or reluctance to let you see the screen.
A request to move off the game''s own chat to a private app is a specific pattern worth taking seriously.
The most effective thing you can do
Play with them, or at least in the same room, particularly at first. A parent who knows the game, the people and the usual routine will notice something wrong long before any setting flags it.
And keep consoles in shared spaces rather than bedrooms for younger children. It is the simplest safeguard there is.