How to choose the right streaming services for your children

PICTURE this: You’re home alone with your little ones—just you, the kiddos, and a TV—and you’ve got dinner to make and laundry to do. Sooner or later, you’ll have to leave the room for a few minutes. In the streaming age, with Disney+ and Netflix and touchscreen tablets, is it safe to leave children alone with TV? Is there a way to achieve peace of mind while you’re getting dinner started, or will they turn off Trolls and switch over to Tarantino’s latest?

We took a look at four of the major streaming options and put together a handy guide to the kid-specific features each one offers. Some, like Disney+ and Netflix, make it incredibly easy to get your kid streaming safely; other services require a little extra setup time, but may ultimately be perfect for your child’s needs.

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Disney+

Photo: LUCASFILM

Disney’s direct-to-consumer platform offers an all-in-one library of animated Walt Disney classics, Pixar films, Marvel flicks, and all the Star Wars you can handle. It’s generally family-friendly across the board; the service launched in November without any movies with an age restriction above 12. The scariest, most violent movies you’ll find in its library are probably Avengers: Endgame and Revenge of the Sith.

Simply create a kids’ profile for your child, and they’ll be limited to safe content in categories like “Sing Your Heart Out” (The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Frozen), “Magic and Fairy Tales” (Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast), and “Amazing Animals” (Brother Bear, The Great Mouse Detective, 101 Dalmatians).

Disney+ costs either £5.99 per month or £59.99 a year, but you can also check it out with a free seven-day trial to see whether you’re satisfied with it.

Get Disney+ for £5.99 per month or £59.99 per year. 

Amazon Prime

Prime Video’s not the ideal choice for child-friendly streaming, but if you’re a Prime member already, you might be able to make it work with a little extra customization. It’s got a whole “Kids & Family” section, as most big video platforms do, but if you plan on leaving your child alone with it, you’ll need to set up parental controls and a PIN number.

You can then restrict playback of anything above a certain maturity rating, meaning you’ll need to enter a PIN to watch, say, The Man in the High Castle or Jack Ryan. Kids will probably find something to enjoy in Amazon’s children’s library; Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, Fireman Sam, and In the Night Garden are a few of the highlights. 

If you’re interested in Prime, you can get the Prime Video streaming service as part of an Amazon Prime subscription for £7.99 a month or £79 per year. You can also opt to just get Prime Video as a standalone subscription for £5.99 a month; this includes a free 30-day trial period.

Get Amazon Prime for £7.99 per month or £79 per year

Get Amazon Prime Video for £5.99 per month

Netflix

Photo: Netflix

Much like Disney+ Netflix works fine if your child has a kids’ profile and knows not to use an adult’s profile. This is where it gets tricky—do you, as the parent, show them how to operate the profile-selection part of the interface? Or does that undermine this seemingly simple system? Fortunately, Netflix also offers customizable parental controls that let you lock mature content behind a four-digit PIN; you can do this for either specific age restrictions or even certain shows or movies.

Netflix has a pretty great mix of exclusive original content and familiar favourites: The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Christmas Chronicles, Dragons: Race to the Edge, Gnome Alone, and the amusing and informative Ask the Storybots.

If you’re thinking of signing up for Netflix, you can get a free 30-day trial period with any one of three subscription packages: the £5.99-a-month deal without high-definition streaming, the standard £8.99 HD (1080p) service, or the ultra-high-definition (4K) Netflix Premium, which costs £11.99 per month.

Get Netflix starting at £5.99 per month

YouTube Kids

Photo: Youtube

There’s a lot of great footage for kids on YouTube, but you have to be very careful; you do not want to give your child free rein on the standard YouTube app or browser. YouTube has notoriously had issues with weird, bizarre, or flat-out scary automated videos creeping into its kids content. They're actively working to make their app safe for families, but be aware. This summer YouTube Kids launched a separate website for kid-friendly content in hopes of combating the inappropriate videos. And there's also its own free dedicated app, which lets you customize your child’s experience with “parent-approved” collections, set the content level for a specific age range, set time limits, and block specific videos or channels. While these approaches are a good step, Reviewed's parenting editor Anna Lane suggests avoiding YouTube for younger kids and limiting it to children who are 10 or older. 

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If you are comfortable with your child viewing YouTube, you may want to look into YouTube premium. If you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber (£11.99 a month following a free one-month trial), your kiddo can watch ad-free, and even download favourite videos for offline viewing when Wi-Fi isn’t available. Some of the good points of YouTube Kids include dedicated categories for things like arts and crafts, toy collecting and play, education and hobbies, and, of course, child-friendly shows and cartoons.

Get YouTube Premium for £11.99 per month

Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.